Moonlighting with the SOS Brigade
by Martin III
Summary: Kyon wakes up one morning to find that he and Haruhi run the SOS Detective Agency. Mikuru is the receptionist, Koizumi is an office boy, and Nagato has seemingly found employment elsewhere. It seems Haruhi has taken the SOS Brigade to do a little moonlighting in another universe! Plus: The truth about how Nagato stole Haruhi's powers. Updates Thursdays.
1. Same Cast, Different Show

Author's notes: This fic picks up some of the pieces from "Don't Ignore Me" and "Haruhi's Boyfriend", and indeed takes place almost immediately after "Don't Ignore Me". I've included enough context that it should be easy enough to understand without having read either of those fics, though those who have read them first will have a bit more insight into a few scenes. I'll be posting behind-the-scenes info on "The Debate of Haruhi Suzumiya" forum so as not to have author's notes in every chapter.

Not sure how long this fic will be yet, but ten chapters at the bare minimum. If you're familiar with the other universe of this story, you'll get the gist of what's going on by the end of the first chapter, but I expect that most of you aren't, and indeed I think it's better if you can share in Kyon's confusion. Enjoy the insanity.

Thanks to Cesar Hernandez for again providing the cover art.

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation. They find themselves in the roles of characters which are property of Glenn Gordon Caron and the American Broadcasting Company. Elements have been borrowed from scripts by Roger Director, Jeff Reno, Ron Osborn, Charles H. Eglee, and Karen Hall.

* * *

**Moonlighting with the SOS Brigade**

\- Chapter 1: Same Cast, Different Show -

"Haruhi Addison!"

I stormed across the reception area, ignoring Ms. Asahina's "Good morning, Mr. Hayes," my eyes burning with indignation at my destination. With one sweep of my arms, I flung open the doors to Haruhi's office.

Where there was something of a gathering taking place. All the female employees of the SOS Detective Agency (except for Ms. Asahina) were clustered around a telescope. Said telescope was aimed at the office building across the street. And there, looking through it, was Haruhi.

"He's dropped a pencil..." she was whispering dramatically. "He's bending down... Waistline of the pants is inching lower... _Boxers!_" She shouted this last word in two distinct syllables, in the manner of a boxing announcer proclaiming knockout. "Told you it was a sucker bet, Edwards. Guess -"

I cleared my throat.

They turned around and saw me. While the others shuffled about with eyes to the ground and hands in their pockets, Haruhi greeted me in a voice several notes higher than usual: "Hiiiii, Kyon!"

I folded my arms.

Clapping her hands together, she said in a business-like tone that we all knew wasn't fooling anyone, "Well, ladies, that concludes today's seminar on applied surveillance techniques."

Taking the hint, they cleared out, still shame-faced as they walked past me. Haruhi and I were left alone.

"So," she said. "You had something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"I think you've just increased it to two things." I approached the telescope. "May I?"

"Ab-sta-ta-lutely." She stepped aside.

I looked into the eyepiece. In the building across the street, a man sat at a desk, the top two buttons of his collared shirt undone, exposing hints of a muscular chest, layered with a sheen of sweat. I guess the airconditioning over there wasn't working.

I got a weird feeling looking at him... as though I was a looking at a gender flip that didn't quite make sense. You know, like if someone drew a male Faye Valentine in yellow hot pants and boob shirt. Intuitively, I felt that I'd caught Haruhi in an act of blatant voyeurism. But logically, if a guy is in office attire, there isn't much to see, even if he undoes a couple buttons or rolls up his sleeves. Female attire allows for more possibilities.

But weird feelings and logic couldn't hold a candle to the outrage and disgust I felt for Haruhi in that moment.

"Haruhi Addison, you are a vile, unenlightened reprobate."

She couldn't even face me. "Yes, I am."

"You don't have the morals and ethics a hyena was born with."

"No, I don't."

"You give detectives a bad name."

"Yes, I do."

She was silent for a moment. Then she turned to me, opened her mouth to say something, and involuntarily cracked a grin and turned her head away. As if this was all one big joke to her. It probably was. It seemed like everything was one big joke to Haruhi. She acted like a comedian who kept on getting fed new material.

"Look," she said, managing an approximation of a straight face. "I'm just as embarrassed about this as you are."

_Since I have nothing to be embarrassed about, I guess that means you're not embarrassed at all. Which, sadly, doesn't surprise me._

"I know that it was childish, and immature... and I really don't have a good excuse for my behavior."

She looked at me again, expectantly, maybe hopefully. I just looked back at her. If she thought I was going to let her slide out of this one...

Then she dropped the bombshell: "I'm sorry." The words came with a sincerity you don't often hear from Haruhi. She walked over to the telescope, picked it up, and handed it to me, tripod and all. "I know we'll both feel better if you keep this in your office."

I blinked. I didn't know what to say. I took the telescope and walked away. As I opened the door to Haruhi's office, I turned and looked back at her.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just surprised." I felt like there was something I could add to that, but I held my tongue.

"I'm really sorry."

"I believe you are," I said in wonder.

I left, closing the door behind me.

Out in the reception area of the SOS Detective Agency, where all the clerical employees had their cubicles, Ms. Asahina was answering the phone. She did it in the quirky manner that I had gradually come to accept as normal in the insanity that my life had become since the day I first walked into these offices:

"SOS Detective Agency.

_"Aliens got you down?  
__Neighborhood esper wielding a gun?  
__We'll settle the dispute  
__and help you all have fun!_

_Has your time traveling friend  
__got lost in a different time?  
__We'll nail down what era  
__and yes, we also solve crimes!"_

After delivering her rhyme, she nervously played with the phone cord. "Um, our r-rates? Um, let me - Hold on." She clasped a hand over the receiver and said, "Is there something I can help you with, Herbert?"

She was talking to Herbert Koizumi, who was pacing in front of her desk with his hands in his pockets. Mr. Koizumi had started here as a temp, but I'd recently promoted him to full time. Frankly, I was worried that he wasn't going to work out here that morning when we walked in to find that Ms. Asahina, in a shockingly uncharacteristic move, had Mr. Koizumi pinned down on her desk and was forcefully making out with him. But after he later rebuffed one of her advances, things between them had become cool, and then strictly professional. I was certain Ms. Asahina still had feelings for him, but she was apparently afraid to let them out. I wasn't going to meddle, though.

"Me?" Mr. Koizumi projected an air of perfect innocence. "No. ...Thank you."

Miss Asahina returned to the caller. "Our rates are... W-w-well, that depends on what sort of services are involved. Also, there's a discount if the case involves -"

Koizumi heaved a sigh.

"Hold, please." Ms. Asahina returned her attention to Mr. Koizumi. "What do you want me to type for you, Herbert?"

"Type?"

"I know what you're doing." She was starting to sound almost hysterical. "Every time you want me to type something, you do this."

"What do you mean?" he said, still maintaining his pure aura of perfect innocence.

As Miss Asahina proceeded to chew him out, I looked down at the telescope in my arms. What was I doing? Haruhi had just demonstrated to me humility, contrition, an ability to admit she was wrong, and real growth as a human being, and here I was, taking away her surveillance tools like a mother confiscating her son's gaming console. After all we'd been through together, didn't I trust her?

I turned around and walked back into Haruhi's office. "I don't really need to keep this..."

There was a sharp clatter. I looked up to see Haruhi looking like a cat who'd been caught with the canary in her mouth. I looked further down to see the reason why. On Haruhi's desk, where she'd apparently thrown them when I walked in, were a pair of binoculars.

"You..." I grit my teeth and threw the telescope to the floor.

"Careful," Haruhi said, turning back towards the window and putting the binoculars back up to her eyes, the pretense obviously dispensed with. "That's a precision instrument."

_No kidding._ I bent down and folded it back together._ I don't know what made me do that in the first place. How does potentially breaking an expensive piece of professional equipment solve anything? I really should have better control over my temper. I thought I _did _have better control over my temper._

_ It's Haruhi. Somehow, she always pushes my buttons._ "I thought I understood you, Haruhi Addison," I said, righteous indignation boiling inside me. "I thought I knew the limits of your behavior. But your depravity knows no limits, does it? Spiking Miss Asahina's drink to get her to act sexy for your stupid movie, physically tormenting her just because she told me the truth about your little gift for me..."

Haruhi lowered the binoculars and arched an eyebrow at me. "When did all _that_ happen?"

"Uh..." I struggled with the tangled threads of my memory, only to have them slip between my fingers. Images that had appeared in my head unbidden now crumpled, revealed as insubstantial illusion. "I... umm... I guess it didn't?"

"That's right, it didn't. So what are you mad at me for?" She resumed observing through the binoculars.

_Damn it, she's got me all flustered._ "...Ogling some secretary like he was a piece of meat at a butcher's window! That's what I'm mad at you for!" I grabbed the binoculars from her. "And one other thing! The thing I came into your office to talk to you about in the first place." I fished into the pocket of my jacket, pulled out the piece of paper I had stuffed in there, and slapped it down on Haruhi's desk. "What are these?!"

"Your fingers. And they look good enough to eat."

"I've been seeing these posters plastered all over town! Is this what you've been giving Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Simmons overtime pay for?"

"Hey, you're the one who's always saying we need to drum up more business."

"What kind of business do you expect this to drum up?" I demanded, laying a finger on the most offensive part of the poster. "A 20% discount if the case involves an alien, time traveler, esper, or slider? Now no one's going to take us seriously!"

"Kyon, baby, you're looking at this all wrong." She laid a little-too-friendly hand on my back. Needless to say, her calling me that really got on my nerves, too. "Think about it: There are 578 detective agencies in this state, but only one which takes cases involving aliens, time travelers, espers, and sliders."

_Pretty sure she just made those numbers up._ "Since none of those things exist, that does us as much good as adding farthings to forms of payment we accept."

"Don't exist? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what you said about leprechauns before we met Ms. Kilpatrick?"

"Ms. Kilpatrick was _not_ a real leprechaun!"

"But she had you going for a minute or two, didn't she?" She grinned.

_Sometimes I think it's worse when she makes something that roughly approximates a legitimate point. Either make a normal, solid, logical argument, or just say something completely insane. Don't do this middle-of-the-road stuff._

"And this promotion isn't going to just help us tap into the niche paranormal market," she continued. "Ordinary, boring humans with ordinary, boring cases are going to see that and think, Wow! Now there's an agency that's different from the rest! An agency who will take on any case, no matter how strange! An agency whose reach goes beyond your wildest imagination!"

"An agency whose marketing department is on LSD," I inserted drily.

"If they'll take on cases with aliens, espers, sliders, and time travelers, then surely they can take on _my_ case! Do you see what I'm getting at, Kyon?"

"Haruhi..." I removed her hand from my back. "I'll admit there are times when I can sort of admire you for being such a reckless dreamer. But I'm trying to run a business here, and you're wasting our money distributing these sensationalist posters, and wasting your time with playing peeping Tom like some introverted nerd who can't get a date."

"Okay, first of all, I'm simply indulging in some visual stimuli to satiate the hunger which my current sex life is not taking care of. So I'll thank you not to imply that I have some sort of mental illness." At those words, it was like someone struck a tuning fork inside my head. "Second, how do you expect us to get more cases if we don't stand out from the competition?"

_We stand out, all right. We have a zero percent success rate._ "What did you just say?"

She sat down on top of her desk. "I said, if we don't do anything to make us stand out from the competition -"

"No, before that." It was weird, but at the same time that prickles were running all over my skin, my outrage was replaced by a simple calm. "Did you just say that love is a sort of mental illness?"

Her eyebrows went up. "What? Love? Of course not. Love is great. Love is, by far, the leading cause of that wonderful condition referred to by philosophers and theologians as 'getting it regular'." She smiled with wistful bliss at that thought. It was a sickening sight. "When I said mental illness, I was talking about your accusation that I'm an introvert. If anyone in this room -"

"I'm sure I've heard you say love is a mental illness before."

"- has difficulty going out and having fun with a member of the opposite sex -"

"And not like you were kidding around, or making an excuse not to get involved..."

"- it's you. All you talk about all day is business, business, and your idea -"

"...like you really meant it. Like you had no capacity to feel that way for someone."

"- of a great night out is wearing an uncomfortable tux and clinking glasses with some lady with her nose in the air while a violinist plays the most boring songs of all time. Nope, I've never said that in my life."

"Huh." I would have challenged her assessment of the way I choose to enjoy myself, but I was still stuck on the "love is a mental illness" thing. Memory can be a deceptive thing, but it wasn't just that I distinctly remembered Haruhi saying this. It was that I couldn't stop hearing her say it. The words, the way she said them, even the look in her eyes as she said them seemed to jar most unpleasantly with reality.

_Come on then, back to reality._

"Alright, you want to know how we're supposed to stand out from the competition?" I crumpled up the poster and threw it in the trash. "By being professional and responsible, and solving our clients' cases. All things which you seem to struggle with, so as a little practice exercise, I want you to personally tear down each and every one of those posters."

"What?!" That got her attention. "Are you crazy? Herbert worked his butt off putting those up!"

"Well, maybe next time you'll discuss it with me first before you launch a major advertising campaign."

"Okay, I went over your head on this one, but stop and think for a moment. Even if it's not your style, this is good publicity. You can't just throw it away."

"I know. _You_ will."

"I _won't_."

"You _will!_"

"You know what? I have a better idea." She hopped off her desk and brushed past me towards the door. "We'll have Herbert do it. You can tell him that all the hard hours he put into promoting our agency are good for nothing but the trash bin!"

"Get back here, Haruhi!"

I strode after her into the reception area, where Mr. Koizumi was handing Ms. Asahina a massive stack of files. "I know it's a lot," he said to her, with that phony smile of his. "But there's no hurry. First thing tomorrow is fine."

_Wait... "phony"? There's nothing phony about Mr. Koizumi. He's one of the most honest people working in this office. Why did I think that?_

"H-H-Herbert..." Miss Asahina quivered, staring with eyes as big as bowling balls at the mountain of paperwork. It looked almost too heavy for her short, dainty body. "What is all this?"

"The Gunderson case."

"The Gunderson _c-c-case_?"

"Indeed. Mr. Hayes and Ms. Addison wanted -"

"Hey Herbert!" Haruhi reached them a split second before I did. "We've got another assignment for you!"

Mr. Koizumi turned and saluted her. "I'm your man, Ms. Addison."

It's probably worth explaining, in case it isn't obvious, that Mr. Koizumi thoroughly idolizes Haruhi. Somehow he got it into his head that she's a great detective, though it honestly seems to go beyond even that. The way he jumps at her every order, you'd think she was the center of the universe. Yeah, it makes no sense to me, either.

"All those posters you put up? Mr. Hayes wants them torn down."

"Actually," I interjected, looking at both Haruhi and Mr. Koizumi, hand on my hip, "...that's a job I meant for Ms. Addison."

"Hmm? Oh no, Mr. Hayes!" Mr. Koizumi protested. "I'd be happy to take on this assignment. No job is too big or too small for Herbert Koizumi!"

"Uhh, yes." I adopted a sympathetic tone. "But I thought it would be awkward for you, since you're the one who put them up in the first place."

"Oh, but that was under Ms. Addison's orders. If you both want them taken down, I'm ready to take them down!"

"Yeah..." Haruhi said in a quiet, serious voice. "If we both want them taken down."

She was realizing that her plan had backfired. I didn't hesitate to press the advantage. "We do, Mr. Koizumi. It's not urgent, but if you can have it done by the end of the day Friday, that would be great."

"You've got it, Mr. Hayes." He made to rush out of the room, but stopped and turned to Ms. Asahina. "Thanks for typing those for me, Agnes. I really owe you one."

Miss Asahina stared after him as he left, then turned to stare into the empty distance instead. "Well," she said. "I guess since Herbert is busy doing casework and important marketing tasks for you, I'd better get busy typing and answering phones." She went back to her desk, eyes to the floor the whole way.

_The poor kid. From the looks of it, with Haruhi, Koizumi, and me increasingly tackling tough and exciting cases, she's starting to feel a little useless being just a maid, serving tea all day. ...I mean... a receptionist, answering phones all day._

"Well," Haruhi said, cutting in on my thoughts. "I guess Koizumi was willing to take all those posters down for me."

I turned and glared at her. "Yeah... I guess he was."

We'd both lost the argument.

Haruhi sulked her way back to her office, like the big baby she was, and I stalked back to mine.

* * *

Haruhi and I didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day. Which was fine. We had these arguments all the time, and this one wasn't any worse than the others. We'd talk again tomorrow morning. Probably argue again, or at least bicker and trade witticisms again, and maybe go out on a case together.

As usual, I was the last to leave. The rest of the agency just didn't have my work ethic, except for Mr. Koizumi of course. I finished my work for the day, turned off the lights, locked up, and drove home.

Big, empty home. I felt saddened as I stepped inside, and spent the next 15 minutes going through the rooms of the house - my house - trying to find someone. I didn't really live alone, did I? I was struck with the certainty that there was someone else here besides me... a cat, at least.

As I searched, an echo of the same feeling I had when I thought Haruhi said love is a mental illness, Mr. Koizumi had a phony smile, and Ms. Asahina was a maid sounded through my soul. And like a good echo, it reverberated deeper and longer than the shout which had initiated it. None of the rooms in my house looked familiar. The tables, the chairs, the cabinets, the refrigerator, the little cupboards, the beds... None of them were mine. It was like I'd wandered into someone else's house by mistake.

And no one was here but me. I sat down and pressed my palms against the tears starting to form in my eyes. I felt like I'd lost someone very important to me. Maybe more than one someone.

_Okay. Settle down, Kyon._

_ Remember._

_ This _is_ your house. The key fit the lock, didn't it? You live alone now. You used to have a full house staff - that must be who you feel like you're missing - but they all left when you couldn't pay them anymore because your accountant took all your money and investments, leaving you with nothing but a few __failing__ companies __maintained as tax write-offs,__ like the SOS Detective Agency. I'd still love to teach that creep a lesson._

_ I haven't gone into most of the rooms in the house in months; now that I have to earn a living, I spend most of my time at the agency. Sometimes I even have breakfast with Haruhi there. No wonder so many of the rooms in this place seem unfamiliar now. No wonder I feel like I'd rather be back at the __a__gency than here._

I went upstairs, got changed into my pajamas, and sat in bed. I stared at the bedside phone. I could call Haruhi, or my parents. But there was nothing much to talk about at the moment, and even just having the options made me feel a little less lonely.

I turned off the light and lay down to sleep. Tomorrow was another big day.


	2. Witness for the Execution pt1

\- Chapter 2: Witness for the Execution (part 1) -

"Hey," Haruhi said, smiling brightly enough to light a cavern running five miles deep into Mordor. "Wanna butter my muffin?"

"Sure." I picked up the knife, cut a generous pad of butter (knowing from experience that there was no use offering Haruhi a small serving), and, reaching across my desk, carefully spread it over the top of her outheld muffin until it was reasonably well-melted and minimally dripping.

"You're pretty good at that, you know."

"Thanks. I always excelled at table utensils growing up." Salad fork, dinner fork, soup spoon, tablespoon, knife... I knew exactly where to set them all and the proper way of eating with them.

Haruhi took a bite of muffin, gave a murmur of pleasure, and wiped the melted butter from her chin with a napkin. Good table manners weren't in Haruhi's nature, but she kept them in practice when we had our little breakfasts together. Much as we loved to argue with each other, we did make a few compromises for each other's sake. Which brings me to the subject I wanted to discuss with her.

"So when I got up this morning, I started thinking..."

"Perfect time to do it," Haruhi quipped. "I used to hold off until lunch time, but I couldn't make any progress on my morning Sudoku."

"...Maybe having those posters up isn't a complete disaster. People who don't believe in space aliens or espers will probably just see that discount as a bit of off-beat advertising. And people who do believe, well, frankly at this point I'm desperate enough for clients that I don't think I'd want to turn them away. So I've asked Mr. Koizumi to hold off on taking down the posters for now."

I closed my eyes as Haruhi spewed out muffin crumbs in my direction. Which I'm pretty sure she did deliberately, for effect. "What, seriously?" she said.

"Seriously," I affirmed, my good mood unshaken since by good fortune none of the chewed-up muffin bits had actually hit my face. "Misguided or not, a lot of work must have gone into putting up those posters, and it would be a shame to make poor Mr. Koizumi undo it all right away. But I have two conditions."

"Ah, there's the grand dictator showing his face! Go on."

"First of all, I want you to promise you won't make any more big decisions like that without talking to me about it."

She held up a hand in the universal sign for "Say no more" and swallowed her last bite of muffin. "My bad. I promise I will never again assume that you'll know a good idea when you see it."

"Haruhi," I growled. _Does she really need to zing me every time she opens her mouth?_

"Alright, alright. Seriously, I shouldn't have left you out of the decision. It won't happen again."

"Second, if we don't get at least one new client by the end of the week, then we're taking those posters down, with no more arguments from you."

"Are we talking one week from today, or by Saturday?"

I took a sip of tea. "...One week from today."

"Sounds fair. How do you like that tea?"

"It's great," I smiled.

"Addison family secret. Instead of steeping the tea leaves in a pot of hot water, you steep hot water in a pot of tea leaves."

_Wait... Haruhi brewed the tea?_

_ I mean, of course she did. She's the one who insisted on having a mini-stove in the office, and I know _I_ didn't brew it... But I have this feeling that the tea is usually brewed by someone else..._

And there was that feeling again, like everything around me was unfamiliar and foreign. I remembered this office, I knew every piece of furniture in it, yet at the same time it was like I didn't belong. Even the stylish business suit I was wearing felt somehow wrong. Haruhi was the only exception. She was the only piece that seemed set where it was supposed to be.

Without thinking, I got up out of my chair and started turning it around.

Haruhi frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Just, um, making myself more comfortable." The chair was now facing directly away from Haruhi. I sat down in it and turned my torso so that I was again looking at her, my arm slung over the back of the chair. I immediately felt better.

Haruhi cocked an eyebrow. "_That_ is more comfortable?"

"Well, it's not a matter of comfort, really..." I did feel embarrassed to be in such an unprofessional position. "...It's more like this just feels... right. So, you were saying?"

"Okay, what _is_ that? Is that supposed to look 'cool' or something?"

"It just feels like this is how I'm used to talking with you."

"Did you hit your head and get all your memories rotated 180 degrees? You've never sat like that when you talk to me. Anyway, it makes you look stupid."

"I just feel more natural this way, okay?" I said, shrugging. "So, do you know if Miss Asahina finished typing up those files for the Kimidori ca- I mean, for the Gunderson case?"

Haruhi gave me a black look. "Turn your chair back around, Kyon. _Now._"

_Who does she think she is, ordering me around? It's my seat._

"I said _now!_" She vaulted across the desk, grabbed the front of my shirt -

"Hey, get your hands off -"

\- lifted me out of my seat with one hand, and spun the chair back around with the other. Finally, she pushed me back into the seat. "There."

I stared at her. "You've lost what little mind you had, haven't you?"

"Yeah. Do me a favor and check if I dropped it somewhere near you." She plopped down in her chair. "Look, I don't think it's too much to ask that you sit like a normal person while we're having a conversation."

"I'm going to bring this up the next time we're talking and you have your feet up on your desk."

Haruhi was smiling now. "Now that's an empty threat. I know you like scoping out my legs."

"Don't you dare try to lower me to your level," I scowled.

"Yeah, I guess your interest _is_ on a slightly higher level." As she said this, she held up her hands with the thumbs and index fingers at right angles to each other, forming a frame for her chest area.

"You're sick." I stood up. "You're sick and I don't know why -"

There was a knock at the door.

"What?" I snapped.

"Um..." It was Ms. Asahina. "T-t-there's a man here to see you, Mr. Hayes."

"Hey, what did I tell you?" Haruhi beamed. "Those posters are working already!"

I wasn't so sure that that particular correlation implied causation, though it was true that new clients weren't something the SOS Detective Agency got every day, or even every week. ...Or even every month.

I glanced at the remains of breakfast on the desk. A little cleanup was in order. "Tell him we'll be with him in a minute, Ms. Asahina."

"Um, well... I think you'd better see him right away, Mr. Hayes."

_Uh... why?_

"Don't just stand there trying to catch flies with your mouth, Kyon!" Haruhi put in. "We've got a case! Show him in, Agnes."

Haruhi's enthusiasm was so uncharacteristic... and yet... so familiar. Before I could reflect on that, the door opened and Haruhi and I were left gazing at our new client.

He reclined at a bent angle in a wheelchair, which was pushed in by a woman who looked to be in her sixties. One hand held a blanket over his legs, while the other held a gas mask, hooked up to an oxygen tank, to his withered and weary face. He breathed through the mask with the same irritation as a sick person enduring their 40th coughing fit of the week.

I hoped I was right to trust Haruhi to show more than her usual level of professionalism. "Hello, I'm Kyon Hayes."

"Haruhi Addison," Haruhi said.

The man took the gas mask from his face and said, with some difficulty, "My name is... Lawrence Everett. This is my daughter, Amy." I nodded acknowledgement at her, and Everett turned and said, "Wait outside, dear."

She did as he said, closing the door behind her. Left in the office was just me, Haruhi, and a man who looked like the Grim Reaper had missed an appointment.

"Mr. Hayes... Ms. Addison... I'm 90 years old." He took a couple heavy breaths. Realizing it was going to take him some time to explain his case, Haruhi and I seated ourselves. "My first memory is as a little boy... what must have been New Year's Eve." He took a breath from his oxygen mask. "...my family, taking me to a special dinner in Baltimore. ...I remember there being a sudden pandemonium outside. The clock must have struck midnight." He attempted to keep going, but had to stop for a few more breaths from the mask. "People shouting... screaming... thrilled and terrified. We had been delivered... to the 20th century." He smiled. "I remember... the first time... I saw an electric light bulb... the first time I saw an airplane fly. I served in World War I... served again, World War II. I was married 47 years. I have three children. They have children. Their children... have children. ...And their children have children. I have lived a life."

I shook my head. "Mr. Everett, I'm afraid I don't understand."

His tone, light when he was doing his reminiscing, became grave. "I've come to you because a murder is going to take place tonight. And you must be there before it happens."

_This is making less sense with every second._ "Mr. Everett, isn't this a matter for the police?"

"Oh, no," he smiled. "They'd stop it. I don't want it stopped."

_With every second._ "You don't?"

"I don't!"

"You don't?" I said again, like a broken talking doll stuck on the same phrase. My only hope of escaping this confusion was the master of craziness. I shot my eyes towards Haruhi and pleaded, "Say something."

"Certainly," Haruhi smiled. Her one concern was getting involved with a case; the insanity level of said case was inconsequential. "Mr. Everett, if you don't mind my asking, who is it that's being murdered?"

"Me," he answered.

"You?"

"Me."

I was still very confused, but I had a general understanding of where this was going. And I didn't like it. "Mr. Everett, I don't think we can help you."

"Understand me, young man." He looked at me gravely. "I want to die. I'm _supposed_ to die. Instead, people I don't know... are working furiously... to forestall a destiny I do not wish to forestall. Machines clean my blood. Machines pump my heart. Machines push air into my lungs. It's not a miracle. It's a horror."

He took some more breaths from his oxygen mask, in a hurried manner which implied he wasn't done with his morbid speech yet. So I stifled the urge to repeat myself and just waited to hear more.

"Every morning, I wake up in pain. Every breath I take is an effort. It gets worse each day. But thanks to science, well... they tell me I can live another three or four years." A hiss of breath escaped through his grinning teeth, apparently the closest he could muster to a bitter laugh. The effort forced him to take another couple breaths from the oxygen mask.

"I still don't understand," Haruhi said. "Just what is it that you want us to do?"

"I need a reliable witness to a crime. You're both trained observers, are you not?"

"Well, _I_ certainly am." She winked at me.

_Right. A reminder of your Peeping Haruhi shenanigans is just what I need right now._

"Right. I've already found someone sympathetic to my situation, a man who understands what has to be done. A matter of turning one knob. Tonight, at 8:05, he will enter my room at the Golden Hour Nursing Home. At 8:07, he will leave. The deed will be done. He will never be found."

"And you need us to...?" Haruhi prompted.

"To be in the rest home when it happens. To watch him leave, go into the room, and document that someone murdered me. Clues will be obvious. You'll have to describe it all to the authorities."

"But... why?" I asked.

"Why? Because I can't sit by while ever penny I have, every penny my children have coming to them, is used up to prolong my pain! I have an insurance policy. It won't pay off for suicide. I have told my nurses I'm expecting an investigator who's helping arrange my affairs. That's why Amy believes she brought me here." Another breath from the oxygen mask. "I know you want some time. Talk it over. There's $25,000 in that folder.

"Call me if you want to help me do what's right."

* * *

Being a private detective is a dirty business. Don't let the TV shows and video games convince you otherwise. Sure, once in a blue moon someone asks you to solve a robbery that the police have given up on, or keep tabs on a loved one they fear is taking drugs or running with the wrong crowd, but your bread-and-butter is taking dirty photos of extramarital affairs so that your client can get more money out of divorce proceedings. And while I won't deny that I still feel a little piece of me die with each of these cases we take on, for the most part I've become used to it. A guy has to make a living somehow, after all, and my modeling days are over.

Even so, there are certain cases you just can't take. Moral wrongs which can't be justified under the umbrella of "This is my job, and I can't judge my client." Because you aren't just a private investigator, you're a human being.

Turning down a case can be awkward. Though what he was asking us to do was wrong, I sympathized with Mr. Everett. And he had asked us to take some time.

After I saw Mr. Everett to the door, I looked around to see Haruhi was no longer beside me.

I approached the reception desk. "Ms. Asahina, where did Ms. Addison go?"

"Hmm?" She put a finger thoughtfully to her cheek. "Oh! Back into her office. To shave."

"To shave?" Haruhi's office did have its own bathroom, but this hardly seemed the time for personal grooming.

Ms. Asahina nodded. "She said something about, um, lowering your level of interest. I think?"

"Uh huh." _Cute, Haruhi. Real cute._

Maybe she was just using her tawdry sense of humor as a defense mechanism to avoid dealing with the walking political issue who'd just tried to hire us, but it was better dealt with now rather than later. I went into her office, still carrying the folder of stuff Mr. Everett had given us, and knocked on the door to her bathroom. "Well?" I prompted.

Haruhi called back, "Well what?"

"How do you want to handle this?" I hefted the folder. "I didn't have the heart to just hand all this stuff right back to him."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" She burst out of the bathroom. "You mean you've already made up your mind?"

I would have answered, but my eyes were bugging out at the sight before me. Haruhi had a razor in hand, shaving cream all up one leg, and the bottom edge of her skirt thoroughly soaked.

Haruhi grinned. "Hey, if you like staring at them that much now, wait till I finish shaving 'em."

I averted my eyes from her singularly unprofessional appearance. Though it did occur to me that in seeing Haruhi like this, I may actually have gotten off easy, because... "Don't women usually do that while they're bathing?"

"You were hoping I'd run out all wet and naked, huh?" _Definitely not._ "That bathtub is too small for me to relax in. So I sit on the tub wall and just soak my legs for shaving. Plus, it saves me the trouble of getting undressed and then dressed again. Which also means I don't have to worry about you peeping in on me."

_Which you don't have to worry about anyway. Also, isn't getting your skirt dripping wet an issue?_

"Anyway, we're getting off the subject! Weren't we having a discussion about not making big decisions without each other just an hour ago?"

"Sure." _Why does she _think_ I came knocking on her bathroom door?_ "But for once, I don't see any way we can disagree."

"We always find a way."

"I mean, obviously we can't help someone commit suicide, not to mention insurance fraud."

"It's not obvious to me. I mean, it's his life. Shouldn't he have some say in how it ends?"

I had been deliberately looking away this whole time, but now I turned and stared into her eyes. She glared right back. "You're serious. You really think it's that simple."

"It should be. It would be, if people hadn't invented a lot of stupid social conventions that keep us from doing what's really right, what makes us happy. For instance -"

"So if I wanted to kill myself, you'd be okay with that?"

"That's different! You're young. He's old, he's lived a life!"

"So the lives of the elderly have no value, is that it?"

"Stop answering everything I say with a rhetorical question! That's the way cowards argue. Besides, this has nothing to do with the value of life. It's _his_ choice to not take extreme measures to prolong his life -"

"Extreme? That oxygen mask he uses might be an eyesore, but Mr. Everett is a long way from being a brain dead vegetable."

"- and that's a choice that's being taken away from him. Ending his life is the only choice he has left!"

"Well, that choice is wrong."

"Oh, and so you're going to decide for a man who's been around a whole century what's right and what's wrong?"

That idiotic moral cop-out pretty much did it. It wasn't much on its own, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I had no desire whatsoever to argue this with Haruhi any further.

I looked her hard in the eyes to make sure she understood. "I won't be a party to this," I said. "And neither are you."

I left her office, shutting the door behind me, and walked back to the reception desk. Mr. Koizumi was there making googly eyes with Ms. Asahina, but at the sight of me coming he scrambled back to his cubicle. Had something happened between those two that I'd missed? I know, I know; none of my business.

I handed Ms. Asahina the folder. "Just stick this in an envelope and hand it to the messenger what he gets here, will you?"

The doors to Haruhi's office burst open, and out stormed Haruhi, towel in hand, sloppily wiping at the shaving cream still all over her leg, skirt dripping bath water onto the floor, and too steaming mad to pay any mind to the dropped jaws of the agency's staff. She looked like a boxer whose manager had just pulled her out of a career-making fight. Leaving what little dignity she had plip-plopping on the carpeted floor with the bath water, she advanced to the reception desk and barked at me, "Roll back to 'And neither are you'!"

I knew from experience that the biggest mistake you could make with Haruhi Addison was letting her intimidate you. She was just a big-mouthed bully at heart. "Just to be clear, that's for Mr. Everett," I said to Ms. Asahina.

She nodded, but she was staring with trepidation at Haruhi. Haruhi in turn glared at her, for a moment of two, and then snatched the folder out of her trembling hands. Ms. Asahina continued to stare at her, her quivering lips trying to form a protest, until Haruhi snarled at her. The rabid dog impersonation was too much for Ms. Asahina's weak sensibilities, and she dove under her chair.

Like I said, just a big-mouthed bully.

"I wasn't done talking with you," she glowered at me.

"Well, I'm done talking with you," I returned. "And since I'm the boss, what I say goes."

_What?_

"What?" Haruhi said, her shock almost in perfect sync with mine.

"Boss. Remember that word? That's me."

_What's going on here? I feel like an actor reading from a script that doesn't make any sense. Every word coming out of my mouth is completely, horribly wrong._

"I own this place," I continued, even as Haruhi continued to stare at me like a woman who'd come home to find her best friend had murdered her husband. "You know what that means? That means I get to decide what gets done around here and how it gets done."

"Oh, really."

"Yes, really."

_Is that all you can say to that, Haruhi? I mean, I guess it makes some sense... I do own the agency, and if I hadn't decided to keep it open against my better judgment, instead of s__hutti__ng it __down__ like the rest of my __fail__ing companies, everyone working here would be in the gutter now, especially Haruhi. And the only reason the place hasn't gone under on its own is because I stepped in to pull things into some semblance of order and sanity._

I allowed some satisfaction to seep into my voice at seeing Haruhi so poetically brought low. "I haven't been doing that for a while. Been letting you charm me into things for a couple of months. But that's changing. _I'm_ making the decisions now. And do you know what I've decided?" She continued to glare her impotent fury at me in equally impotent silence. "I don't appreciate your cavalier attitude towards your appearance in my place of business."

"Oh, you don't?" She said this in a blithe manner obviously intended to provoke me, but I noticed her self-consciously wiping more shaving cream off her leg. Honestly, she'd have done better to just leave her leg smothered in cream; it had obviously been a while since she'd bothered to shave there, and the hairs with bits of white sticking to them were most unsightly.

"No. I don't. And I've decided we're not going to help murder Mr. Everett."

"Oh, yeah? But you're not going to stop it, either, are you?"

"What?"

"Call the police!" She picked up the reception desk phone and held the receiver out to me. "You know a murder is going to take place, you know the when and where. Call them and have them stop it!"

I stared at her. "Do you really have no understanding whatsoever of the concept of client confidentiality?"

"That's not what this is about!" She flung the receiver down. "You just don't want the blood on your hands!"

_If you're saying there's blood to be had on someone's hands, aren't you essentially saying that taking the case would be wrong? Make up your mind._ "I'll say it again. I'm in charge here," _No._ "...and I make the..."

_No. I'm not saying that again._

_ Are you freaking stupid? Nobody says to Haruhi "I'm the boss" or "I'm in charge here". Wherever she goes, whatever is happening around her, Haruhi's the boss, Haruhi is in charge. That's the way it is and saying anything different is a good way to get executed for blasphemy._

"...make the decis... Oh, good grief." I let my face fall into my hand. "This makes no damn sense."

Haruhi cocked an eyebrow at me. "Huh?"

"This is all wrong!" I knew I was shouting for no obvious reason in a room full of my employees, but I couldn't stop myself. "You're the boss! I'm your underling. You don't go around making dirty quips and trying to get me to notice your legs. In fact, you hate it when I look at you with anything remotely resembling lust! And you _did_ say that love is a mental illness!"

"Hey, Agnes," she whispered down to Ms. Asahina, who was still hiding under her chair. "Has the strain finally gotten to him, or did he suddenly remember that today is Opposite Day?"

"Listen to me," I said, gripping Haruhi by the shoulders. "If anyone can understand what I'm feeling, you can. You're the one who's convinced there are space aliens, time travelers, espers, and... sliders! That's it! Somehow, we've ended up in the wrong dimension! You can't go around saying that there are people hopping around dimensions and not at least accept the possibility that we've done the same thing!"

Believe it or not, I realized that I was ranting a little, so it was to my surprise as well as relief that Haruhi responded with a calm, serious nod. "Sure, that's a possibility. But what makes you think that's what's happened? The only thing around here that isn't perfectly normal is you flipping out."

She wasn't seeing it. Haruhi wasn't recognizing that almost everything around us was different, that we weren't _home_. So how could I prove to her that that was what was happening? Anything strange I pointed out to her, she would just say, "That's normal." Like I had until a moment ago, she accepted the way things were as, well, the way things were. And probably from an objective standpoint, all these things _were_ perfectly normal, and it was only us who were strange.

But... maybe that was it. Whether we were normal and the things around us were strange, or the other way around, there was the chance of some obvious inconsistency. My mind frantically shuffled through the facts (judging by the look on her face, I was already losing Haruhi's interest) and I found something.

"Look," I said. "We're Japanese, aren't we?"

"What are you talking about?"

"We don't have thick eye sockets, do we? We know a few things about Japanese history that a foreigner wouldn't know, don't we?"

"So?"

And now, the coup de grace. "So what kind of last names for Japanese people are Hayes and Addison?"

Haruhi looked at me steadily. Then she said, "Obviously, we each have at least one paternal ancestor who wasn't Japanese."

_Dammit._ "Alright, what about Mr. Koizumi and Ms. Asahina? Their first names are Herbert and Agnes. How do you explain that?"

"Easy. Lots of immigrants give their kids names that are native to their adopted country."

_Dammit, dammit, dammit._ "Alright, but then don't you think it's a weird coincidence that there are four Japanese immigrants, none of us related to each other, working for the same detective agency?"

"Yeah, so? I had no idea you were such a racist, Kyon."

_How does that make me a - No, I don't want to hear Haruhi explain that._ "Then take a look at our ages. To work as a private investigator, you have to be at least 20 years old." _Yeah, that's just a guess. So sue me._ "You can't be more than 17 years old, and Ms. Asahina looks like she's 14! And I don't know how old I am, but I'm definitely too young to be a washed-up model running a detective agency!"

"What can I say, Kyon? Life is rough."

"That's not my point."

"And much as I'd love to discuss your mental breakdown further," she continued, walking away with Mr. Everett's folder under her arm, "I've got a case to take care of."

"What case? There is no case!"

As she opened the agency's front door, she turned and gave me a look of firm, cold resolve. "I think there is."

She closed the door behind her.

"Rrrrrrggghhh!" My fists were clenched so tight I was surprised I wasn't drawing blood. And with the dripping skirt and cream-smeared leg of Haruhi Addison having walked out, I was now the sole focus of my employees' slack-jawed, disbelieving stares. "That's another thing!" I said to them. "I'm not supposed to have a temper like this! Now everyone get back to work, or... I'm docking your pay, or something!"

I stomped back into my office. I sat down at my desk. I began recovering my composure.

Someone knocked at my door. "Come in."

Mr. Koizumi poked his head in. "Mr. Hayes, may I talk to you privately?"

"Of course. Come in."

He stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. "I was listening to what you were saying just now to Ms. Addison, and I do believe you're right. You, me, Ms. Asahina, and Ms. Addison... we've all been taken from another dimension."

For a moment, both of us were silent. Then I managed, "Really?" Frankly, the idea was so crazy that even after all the effort I'd put into trying to convince Haruhi, I was shocked to hear someone agree with it. Actually, make that _especially_ after the effort I'd put into trying to convince Haruhi. If even the sliders enthusiast wouldn't believe it, then how did someone like Mr. Koizumi recognize what was going on? "Do you have any idea what caused this? Or who's responsible?"

"I was only just now awakened to the realization that things around us are not perfectly normal by your outburst, so I haven't assimilated enough evidence to narrow down the answer to that question. However, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say our brigade leader is responsible. When she wasn't at our meeting on Monday, I began to suspect something was wrong, though I would not have anticipated something so dramatic as this. Actually, I suppose I should be asking you if you have any idea why she didn't show up to that meeting."

"Meeting? I'm sorry... I..."

"Oh. You're still a bit confused, aren't you? I suppose being an esper does give me a bit of an advantage in clearing away the cobwebs. Perhaps it would help if I reminded you that my name is not Herbert Koizumi, but Itsuki Koizumi?"

"Uh..."

"No, I suppose not." He smiled. "But another name might resonate a bit more strongly with you. Haruhi Suzumiya."

_Haruhi Suzumiya._

I remembered.


	3. The Gift

\- Chapter 3: The Gift -

"I remember, Koizumi. I can tell you what was going on with Haruhi..."

* * *

She did show up for the meeting on Monday. You just didn't see her. Okay, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. The trouble started at lunch that day, when Miss Asahina -

Wait, no...

* * *

"Maybe it's the Herbert in me, Kyon," Koizumi said, "...but you're beginning to try my patience."

"It's just hard to say when Haruhi might have started going off the rails." I lay my head in my hand. "It wasn't a sudden thing... She didn't really flip out until Monday at the meeting, where you didn't see her, and even then, that kind of unacceptable behavior is Haruhi's thing, in a way. But there were signs that something was wrong, going back all the way to when I woke up from my coma."

"Well, let's not go back quite that far. We don't have all time in the world." He took a seat in the chair in front of my desk. "Just try to explain the direct cause of Haruhi's actions at the Monday meeting."

"Okay... I guess the best way to do that is to go back to Friday morning. When I arrived in class, Haruhi was kind of slumped over her desk, looking depressed. She'd called me the night before and we... had an argument, so..."

"You paused right before 'had an argument'," Koizumi noted.

"So?"

"It wasn't really an argument, was it?"

His smile infuriated me. "Perhaps _you'd_ like to tell the story?"

"Please, continue." He was obviously enjoying himself already.

* * *

I took my seat in front of Haruhi, turned to her and said, "So, are you going to tell me everything that was wrong with what I said last night?"

I figured that would rouse her, but she didn't budge. "No. Almost everything you said last night was true."

"Oh, really?" I was astonished, but I managed to make it sound like mock astonishment. "Then why did you sound so angry with me when we said goodnight?"

"_You_ said goodnight. I said don't hang up on me. Which you did anyway."

"Well, what else were we going to talk about?"

"I don't know." She was staring out the window, and quivering a little, as if the winter chill was getting to her. "I just wanted to talk more."

I started to feel a little worried. It was great to have her admit I was right about something for a change, but what I'd said to her Thursday night, the things she admitted I was right about, was basically a warning that she was going to lose what friends she had if she didn't change her behavior. Maybe she'd decided that meant she was going to lose her friends.

"Well, you shouldn't feel down about what I said last night," I told her. "No one changes her way of doing things as much as you. That's how you came to form the SOS Brigade, as I recall."

She was silent for a few moments. Then she said, "I don't know if I can change enough to make a difference." Her tone abruptly shifted as she finally looked up at me. "Why do _I_ always have to change, anyways? Why can't you adapt to my way of doing things a little?"

"We've done nothing but adapt to your way of doing things, Haruhi." She continued to glare at me, but didn't say anything, like she was stalemated. "Anyway, here's another idea: Why don't you try getting some more friends? That way you wouldn't be so dependent on the SOS Brigade. The rest of us all have friends outside of the club. You did, too, didn't you, back in middle school?"

"What do you care?" Her voice cut like a whip. "Why are you so eager for me to get other friends?"

Class was about to start. "No reason." I turned to face the front of the classroom.

* * *

"That was a terrible lie," Koizumi commented.

"Well, it was a stupid question. Why does she _think_ I want her to have more friends? Is there really more than one reason why I might want that?"

"Perhaps she needed to hear you say it. But that is not what I was referring to. I meant your assertion that Miss Suzumiya needs to change her behavior to keep her friends. You know full well that Asahina, Nagato, and I are required by duty to be Miss Suzumiya's friends for as long as she wants us, whether we like it or not."

"That's not friendship. That's servitude. Haruhi needs people who will stay by her side because they want to, not because they have to."

"Hmm, I see." He leaned back. "Your intentions were noble, but I can't help but feel you should have foreseen that the results would be unhappy. Miss Suzumiya has already considerably changed for the better, all without you pressuring her to do so. By now you should have learned that she learns and grows from your supporting her, not from your condemning her."

"I think I could do without your condemning me, too. May I continue?"

"By all means."

* * *

She was pretty quiet at the SOS Brigade meeting that day. Just typing away. I glanced over once, and she looked fine. Other than that, I was too busy enjoying Mikuru's tea and company to pay her much attention. After the way Haruhi exploded at the two of us for fooling around during the meeting the day before, we weren't comfortable getting too friendly, but it was just nice to have her near without you around to spoil the atmosphere.

Don't give me that hurt puppy dog look. I'm not buying it.

Anyway, Haruhi still seemed to be in a perfectly ordinary mood when she left, so I put her out of my mind for the weekend. Quite a relief for me.

I was running late on Monday morning, so I only briefly talked to Haruhi before class. She was still normal. It wasn't until lunch that things started to get weird.

As usual, when lunch break came Haruhi went off to do her thing, or so I assumed. Taniguchi and Kunikada had both developed disgustingly runny noses, and had to go home right after she left. At the time I assumed there was something going around, but I'm thinking now that Haruhi may have been behind it. (A couple weeks ago she said to me, out of the blue, that she wished she could have been at a witch trial. If she were, the prosecutor would have had no trouble at all finding evidence against her.)

Unsurprisingly, given my reputation as a member of Haruhi's mad cult, no one else opted to sit with me, so I ate my lunch by myself. That is, until I was blessed with a divine visitor: Our own Miss Asahina, walking into class 1-5 with her hands clasped behind her back.

This was a rare sight, and thankfully the males present behaved themselves. More than a few eyes followed her as she set trepidatious yet graceful steps across the room to my desk, but no one went so far as to point or whisper.

"Miss Asahina," I said, as she got close. "Is something up?" It flattered me to think she might have come just to share lunch with me, but her face showed she had more of a purpose than that. It was for the best, anyway. Something as blatant as the two of us having lunch together would have made people talk.

"Not really, no. It's just, um..." She blushed, and averted her eyes. "W-w-well, t-this is for you."

She took her hands out from behind her back, and I saw now that they were holding a piece of curry bread.

"For me?" I said, astonished.

She nodded.

And _now_ the males started whispering. Damn busybodies.

I accepted the curry bread, and said "Thank you," with a slight bow.

She parted her beautiful lips slightly, as though about to say "You're welcome," but instead she silently took the seat next to me. She busied herself with one of the textbooks in her bag, but I could see her glancing at me surreptitiously as I enjoyed the curry bread.

And I do mean _enjoyed_ it. I always like curry bread, but this was more than your average piece of curry bread. It was filled with a rich and illuminating blend of ingredients, baked to soft yet hearty perfection, and most important of all, bore that special warmth that could only come from Miss Asahina's hands. This was curry bread that had been unmistakably made with love.

I paused eating to say, "Miss Asahina, you have to be the greatest baker in the world."

She smiled. "Oh, I didn't make it. Miss Suzumiya did."

I stared at her. Suddenly the curry bread didn't taste quite so good.

"I was just passing by your class, and I saw her standing outside the door with the curry bread," Miss Asahina explained. "As soon as she saw me, Miss Suzumiya lit up, and said it was perfect timing that I had come by. She handed me the curry bread and told me to give it to you, because she didn't have time to give it to you herself. I was confused as to how it could take more than a few seconds, and she said something about how you were bound to start talking her ear off if she gave it to you in person. Then she told me not to tell you it was from her and ran off."

"So why _are_ you telling me it was from her?" _Quite frankly, I'd much rather you hadn't._

"W-Well..." She lowered her eyes and pushed the tips of her two index fingers together. "When I first saw her outside the classroom, before she noticed me, she looked so helpless, like she really, really wanted to walk over to you and give you the curry bread, but couldn't. It just..."

"How can you sympathize with her, after the way she treats you?" I said in admiration.

She shook her head. "It's not that. It's just... She made that curry bread for you, and she wanted you to have it, even if it meant you would think it came from someone else. She always acts so thoughtless and cruel to you, that it doesn't seem right that when she actually does something nice for you, she doesn't even get the credit."

"You're right." It was a kind of revelation. Haruhi _had_ done something nice for me - a small thing, but nonetheless. How could anyone expect Haruhi to ever get any better if we didn't give positive reinforcement when she did something right?

"Also..." Miss Asahina gave me a shy smile. "I'm not very good at making curry bread. If I let you think I'd made this, I'd be setting you up for a big disappointment if you ever asked me to do it again."

I smiled back at her. "Well, I suppose I should thank Haruhi for this. The problem is, if I do, she'll figure out that you told."

"That's all right. I think she'll be too happy that you appreciate what she did to even think about how you knew. Even if she does figure it out, I... I'd rather that, than to think of her making such an effort to do something for you, and thinking you don't even know."

Miss Asahina really sounded as though she felt sorry for Haruhi. It was wonderful that the two of us shared such a sympathetic nature.

She excused herself, and I finished eating my curry bread. It would have been better if Miss Asahina had made it, but a gift from Haruhi had its own merits. Just a few months ago, anything that I knew came from Haruhi would have tasted vile in my mouth, but ever since my coma, I had become aware that for all her faults, Haruhi made my life brighter. It wasn't every day that she showed any sort of kindness towards me, and that made the gesture all the more appreciated.

So needless to say, I was in a good mood. Haruhi came back to class shortly before the end of lunch. I smiled at her, but she kept her head down, declining even eye contact with me as she went back to her seat. She looked like I was her baseball coach and she'd just struck out on the last at-bat of the game.

Her defeated bearing didn't weaken my smile. Frankly, she looked adorable like this. It was different from her usual sad look; there was the sense of her regretting having let someone else down.

"Hey, Haruhi," I said, making my tone as encouraging as I could. "That curry bread was wonderful."

She twitched. "What curry bread?"

"The one you gave Miss Asahina to give to me." I covered for Miss Asahina as best as I could. "You think I can't recognize your cooking? Besides, I don't think Miss Asahina even knows how to make curry bread."

"Hmm." She folded her arms. "I don't know why you're talking like it's a big deal. But I guess I knew you would, and that's why I told Mikuru not to tell you I made it. I have to practice my cooking, and now and then I don't want to eat what I've made. I thought it made more sense to give it to one of my brigade members than to just throw it away."

"Why not give it to Miss Asahina, then?"

"Do you want to see her get fat? Short girls like Mikuru can easily blimp out if they eat extra, you know."

Sounded like another of Haruhi's made-up facts, but I didn't waste time challenging it. "So it was just practice, then."

"That's right."

It was a plausible story, and Haruhi didn't show any sign that she was being dishonest.

Even so, I wasn't buying it. That was no practice bread. That bread was made with... Well, hopefully not with _love_; the idea of Haruhi in a pink apron lovingly baking bread for the man of her dreams was just nauseating, and the idea of that man being me was outright terrifying. But made with some sort of positive emotion, certainly.

Maybe I could prod the truth out of her. "Well, it would have been very nice if you'd made something especially for me."

"Maybe someday. You haven't done much to deserve having your brigade leader slave over a hot oven for you."

"I wasn't thinking you'd do it because I deserve it. I was thinking you might do it because friends sometimes do nice things for each other." One last push, before I start laying it on too thick. "Are you _sure_ you didn't have me in mind at all what you were making that bread?"

"Are you going to make me keep on repeating myself? And what are you getting so high and mighty about, anyway? You've never baked anything for me."

_Obviously that's because I can't bake, so... No, never mind. Any moron can take some store-bought mix and make a lumpy batch of cookies. Haruhi would probably have a few biting remarks about their quality, but she'd still have been pleased that I made the effort. No, I admit it: I'm just not the sort of person to do something thoughtful like that. And apparently Haruhi is._

I smiled at her again. "Well, whatever your reasons for making it, thank you. I enjoyed it."

"You're welcome." She didn't return the smile, but I was more than satisfied to receive simple courtesy from Haruhi. Obviously, I shouldn't have been.

* * *

"I think I'm beginning to see the picture," Koizumi said with satisfaction.

"Really? Because that's the part where I got completely lost." I rubbed my temples. "If Haruhi was an ordinary girl, being shy about giving me the curry bread would make sense. But she's not. This is completely out of character for her."

"You mentioned the coma you were in. I think you're right; Miss Suzumiya hasn't been quite the same since then. She's lost a good deal of her self-confidence, for obvious reasons."

"Obvious to you, maybe."

"Not to you? Think over what happened, from her perspective. You fell down a flight of stairs, hit your head, and were unresponsive. Could you blame her if she thought you might be dead?"

I shrugged. "They must have confirmed I was alive when they checked me into the hospital, if not sooner."

"It doesn't matter. The damage was done. She's become afraid of losing you. You then aggravated that fear with your warning about losing her friends."

_Of course. Blame it all on me._ "There has to be more to it than that. Haruhi, worried I'll think less of her because she made me a gift? Making the entire navy sink in one day would be easier than making her confidence sink that low. Besides, why would that make her do _this?_" I waved a hand at our surroundings.

"I only said I'm beginning to see the picture. Not everything is clear yet, I'll admit. Go on. What happened at the meeting before I got there?"

* * *

Mr. Okabe had asked me to stay after, so I told Haruhi I would be late to the meeting. This turned out not to be the case; Mr. Okabe just gave me a book that he thought might help me understand the chemistry concepts I was having difficulty with, and that was it. It was a nice idea, I supposed, but I didn't see where I was going to find the time to read it.

Anyway, with that out of the way I headed to the clubroom with an eager stride. Somehow I figured that, what with the pleasant surprise at lunch, this meeting was likely to be more exciting than usual.

I approached the door, and was greeted by the familiar sounds of Miss Asahina wailing in distress and Haruhi yapping out remonstrations. I resigned myself to waiting until Miss Asahina had been fitted into her latest costume.

As I leaned against the wall, it struck me that there was something different about the girls' vocalizations. Miss Asahina's cries sounded less like distress than outright pain. And Haruhi's shouts sounded less commanding and exhorting than vengeful.

From those sounds, the likelihood that Miss Asahina was in a state of undress was even less than it would be if there were no noises coming from the clubroom at all. Or maybe I figured that at this point, I'd seen her in such a state so often, once more wouldn't be the end of the world. Whatever the case, I dispensed with knocking and burst into the room.

This arguably rash action, as it turned out, was well-justified. The scene inside the clubroom would have been more at place in a terrorist interrogation center than in a public high school. Miss Asahina, still in her school uniform, had been forced onto her knees by Haruhi, who was gripping her by the neck with one hand and repeatedly yanking on her hair with the other while digging a heel into her calf.

"...ordered you not to tell him, you traitor! I ordered you!"

Miss Asahina sniffed. "I'm sorry... Owwww!"

"Stop it!" I ran forward and grabbed Haruhi's wrists, trying my best to release her iron grip on Miss Asahina. "Let go of her! Are you insane?! You could get expelled for something like this!"

Even if Haruhi were a normal girl, prying her hands away from Miss Asahina without doing her poor victim further harm would have probably been beyond my strength. I certainly had no illusions about my ability to overcome Haruhi's iron strength and the grip she had around Miss Asahina's thick tresses. I just had to try.

Fortunately, after spitefully giving Mikuru's hair one last sharp yank, Haruhi surrendered her grip and jerked her hands free of mine.

"Have you lost your mind?" _I feel like I've already asked that question, but it definitely bears repeating._ "Why would you do that to her?"

"To punish her, obviously."

"Damn it, can't you see she was helping you?! How do you expect to keep your friends when you treat them like this?"

She didn't answer. She just glanced down at Miss Asahina (who was rubbing at her still flowing tears and holding a hand over the top of her head in a meek effort to guard her hair from further pulling), glared back at me a moment, and stormed out of the clubroom without a word, slamming the door behind her.

With her gone, I knelt down to tend to the sobbing Miss Asahina. I wasn't sure how much contact was acceptable in this situation, but I figured it was safe to put an arm around her shoulders, at least. "Are you okay?"

"Y-yes... I'm f-fine." But she was shaking like a jackhammer. "I j-just wasn't expecting..."

"Was it you telling me about the curry bread? Was that what it was about?"

She gave an emphatic nod, as if she were still being interrogated. "I r-really thought she'd be happy... D-did you two have a fight?"

"No. No, with me she acted like the whole thing was no big deal." That was what pissed me off more than anything. I didn't know what it was that had made Haruhi so upset, but obviously it had something to do with me, because she hadn't made curry bread for anyone else. So she had no reason to drag Miss Asahina into it at all.

Wait. In fact, she had no reason to be angry at all, with anyone. _That_ was what pissed me off more than anything.

"I don't understand, then." She seemed to have gotten more control over her shaking. "Miss Suzumiya hasn't gotten mad at me in a long time..."

_Yeah... And even when she did get mad at you, she acted more like you were a dog who'd peed on the carpet. Just now, she seemed to think of you as a fellow human being who'd just ruined her life._

"I tried to apologize, but she didn't seem to even care whether I was sorry about it or not..."

"Listen, Miss Asahina. How about I walk you home now and you can take tomorrow off, at least as far as the SOS Brigade meeting goes? I'll have a talk with Haruhi, and everything will be back to normal come Wednesday."

Yes, I realize how ironic that statement is in hindsight. You don't need to point it out for me.

"Alright. Thank you, Kyon."

My attention had been so captured by what Haruhi was doing to Miss Asahina that it was only at this point that I noticed Nagato was in the room. Just sitting and reading her book. I felt a flash of anger at her for having just sat there the whole time, but when she looked up and met my eyes, I realized there was nothing she could have done that wouldn't have either made Haruhi's anger even worse or exposed her extraterrestrial nature. Not a word passed between us as I left with Miss Asahina.

Only to find you right outside the door. "Oh! Is the meeting over, then?"

I hope you understand now why we didn't dignify that question with reply.

Well, no, I really don't have to tell you about the part of the story that you were there for. But I enjoy it.

"Hmm, I see... Miss Suzumiya hasn't shown up." Then you finally noticed Miss Asahina was crying, as if that wasn't the most obvious element of the scene. "Oh. Has something happened?"

That's when Miss Asahina and I walked away, leaving you standing there like the clueless, insensitive dolt you were.

She wiped away the last of her tears, but as we made our way out of the school and down the streets, it was obvious that she was struggling to hold it together. I couldn't blame her. Haruhi's viciousness was awful to see. I found myself half wishing, for the first time in a long while, that Miss Asahina would quit the SOS Brigade. For all the pleasure I derived from her company, I had to admit that she didn't have the fortitude to endure the worst that Haruhi could dish out, and she certainly didn't deserve to. In spirit, in gentleness, in simple decency, Miss Asahina far outshone any of us in the SOS Brigade.

Out of deference to her distress, I refrained from saying a word to her during our walk. As we neared her house, however, she suddenly spoke up herself. "Kyon. Will you promise me something?"

"Anything."

"Don't fight with Miss Suzumiya about this. I couldn't stand it if I was the cause of... of..."

"The end of the world?"

"I don't think it could go that far. But she cares about you so much, the consequences could be just about anything."

"She doesn't care about me at all. I'm just another toy she's fond of. When we don't do what she wants us to do, she turns on us like this. You shouldn't coddle her when she does this."

"It's not that simple!" She shot me such an aggrieved look, I felt like I'd just kicked a puppy. "She's not acting like her usual self; you must realize that! We have to find out what's bothering her and fix it. If you fight with her now, it will only make things worse."

She was right. I knew damn well that Haruhi wasn't acting like her usual self. And I knew if I did anything to upset her further, she would probably take it out on Miss Asahina. I just hate being asked to walk on pins and needles around Haruhi whenever _she_ does something wrong.

I promised her I wouldn't fight with Haruhi. And I went home.

After I got there, I began to feel I could even see it from Haruhi's perspective, just a little. I remembered how shy she'd acted when the ENOZ girls came by to thank her for helping them. For all the mad, groundless self-confidence she has when doing her own thing, she seemed to believe that nothing she did could ever be good enough for anyone else. No matter how much the people she'd been nice to assured her otherwise. So to Haruhi, my knowing that she'd made that curry bread for me was humiliating. Maybe it hadn't even occurred to her that Miss Asahina was trying to do her a favor.

I also started to feel a little sorry that I'd hung up on her the other night when she'd called me up just to talk. Of course, if she were in my shoes she'd have yelled at me, hung up, and never felt a moment's remorse, but I was better than that. Who knows? Maybe if I'd let her bend my ear a while longer that night, she wouldn't have been pulling on Miss Asahina's hair.

After doing my homework, I played video games for a while, but the thought kept dogging me like a murderer's conscience: _Call her now._

Maybe I just wanted to get the conversation over with while I was in a good mood. At the moment, I felt I could happily forgive Haruhi for everything.

_Go ahead. Do it. The sooner you do it, the sooner you can see her smile again._

I picked up the phone and called.

Haruhi answered on the first ring. "Hey, Kyon!" Her voice was bubbly. "What's up? I was just watching this old American TV show. It's pretty good, actually. It's about these two detectives, except one of them's actually a model who lost all her money, and -"

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!" The rage, which had been slumbering for the past few hours, now roiled up stronger than ever. "You make me curry bread out of nowhere, you assault Miss Asahina for having the kindness to give you the credit, and now you're talking to me _like nothing happened?_"

"Oh, you want to talk about today?" Just like that, she sounded like a mother talking to a son who'd asked for a raise in his allowance after getting suspended from school. "Then why don't you tell me about how you played at knight in shining armor so you could have an excuse to walk Mikuru home?"

"You. Were spying on us?"

"You'd better not have done anything with her. I'm trying to preserve Mikuru's virginity for someone special, not -"

"No, I'm not letting you change the subject to your insane suspicions! It's bad enough you make Miss Asahina wear embarrassing costumes for your own personal amusement and force her to go along with every hare-brained scheme that enters your head, but you were torturing her for no damn reason! You terrorize her, you abuse her, and she's nothing but considerate to you, and as thanks you just abuse her even more! I've put up with this for so long because I thought you might get better. For a while I even thought you _were_ getting better! But attacking her like that after she tried to do you a favor is a new low, even for you!" I was amazed that I'd managed to get this far without her interrupting. "So if you think you can just brush this aside by being cold and condescending like always, you can think again! Do you hear me?"

She didn't answer.

Having released the bulk of my emotion, I felt calmer. "Alright, I'll make this easy on you. Just explain to me your behavior today - and I mean the truth, not some nonsense about your responsibilities as leader of the SOS Brigade. And apologize to Miss Asahina. That's all I ask."

She didn't say anything.

"Haruhi?"

I took the phone away from my ear and checked the display.

She'd hung up on me. I'd been lecturing to a phone.

My hands shaking with fury, I pushed redial. As the phone rang, I paced back and forth like a guard dog awaiting an intruder to sink his teeth into.

On came the message Haruhi hadn't bothered to change for as long as I'd known her. It was amazing how different she sounded. So bored and angry. And unhappy. "This is Haruhi Suzumiya. If you are a time traveler, an alien, an esper, or a slider, leave a message saying how I can meet with you. If you're a normal human, I wouldn't bother. But you probably will. Just don't expect me to call back."

At last came the beep, and I let her have it. "Really, Suzumiya?! Really? At least I said goodbye before I hung up! And _I_ had a good reason for it. You think you can just treat your friends like whipping boys and then hide in your hole when you get called out on it? Well, I'm going to be waiting for you in that clubroom every day, so you're going to have to either face me or lose the brigade! And if you think you can wait until I calm down, you can forget it, because every second you try to weasel your way out of this just makes me angrier! So if I were you I'd call me back right now, because there's going to _hell_ to pay by tomorrow afternoon! And you do not even want to _know_ how pissed I'm going to be if you drag this out until Wednesday. It's time for you to grow up and stop expecting your friends to roll over for you like dogs!

"And change your voicemail already! You sound outright suicidal on that old recording!"

I hung up and slammed the phone down on my desk.

Then it hit me.

_Oh crap. What have I done? Haruhi's going to play back that message and hear me ranting like a lunatic! __What __possessed me to__ even say__ those things__? __I never lose my temper like that. __What if she shows it to someone else? Heck, she might decide to play it for everyone to hear at the SOS Brigade meeting. Or worse. What was I thinking?_

* * *

"You were concerned at the embarrassing nature of this voice message, but not at its potential to make her decide to destroy the world?"

I lay my head in my hand. "That line is old, Koizumi. Haruhi's not going to destroy the world just because I yelled at her."

"So, your faith in Miss Suzumiya remains unshaken, in spite of our current circumstances. That is reassuring."

"What are those circumstances? It's time _you_ answered a question or two. Where exactly are we?"

"You say that as though you expect me to know the answer."

"Don't you?"

"Yes and no."


	4. Where the Set Ends

\- Chapter 4: Where the Set Ends -

"You said we'd been taken to another dimension," I prodded, hoping for once to get a straight answer out of Koizumi.

"Did I?" He smiled. "To be honest, I was merely echoing the terminology you used. 'Another dimension' is a good enough description for where we are in layman's terms, but to people who are trapped here, it carries potentially dangerous inaccuracies. For example, it implies that this reality contains the equivalent of a complete universe. This is not the case. In fact, though I may be mistaken on this count, I suspect that this reality is analogous to the studio where a television show is filmed. To the show's viewers, there is the illusion that the show takes place in its own complete world, and the actors must behave as though this is indeed the case. But in truth, the show's entire existence is just three or four sets, and if there are more than three or four settings, the props and scenery for a set are swapped out, thus making it appear that events which in fact take place in a single room are playing out in difficult buildings, even different cities."

"And in this analogy, Haruhi is the director?"

"It would seem so. So you understand now?"

"Not at all."

He leaned back in his chair. "Perhaps if I am more direct with my answer. We are currently in a small pocket realm, created by Haruhi for the sole purpose of playing out the drama we are now involved in."

"You mean closed space? But it's not grey or anything."

"No, not closed space. Closed space is designed for the celestials. This pocket realm was designed for us."

"What... as our new home?" I shuddered.

"Would that be so bad? You could make a good private investigator. But I don't pretend to know the answer. When you asked if I knew where we were, I said 'yes and no'. The 'yes' part is the spatial explanation I just gave. The 'no' part is what sort of reality this is supposed to be."

"Isn't that part self-evident?"

"You could say so, but I'm not willing to settle for 'It is what it is' in this case. You said that when you called Miss Suzumiya, she mentioned she was watching an old American TV show. Given that we're evidently Americans in this reality, I think it's reasonable to hypothesize that Miss Suzumiya has taken us into her personal simulation of that TV show."

I groaned. "We're inside a detective show?"

"Yes. The trouble is, I don't know which one. We have the names of characters – Hayes, Addison, Herbert, Agnes, MacGillicudy – but I don't recognize any of them. I don't suppose you do?"

"Nope. We should be able to look it up with a search engine, though, right?"

"Hmm." Koizumi looked at me in a very strange manner. It was as though he were trying to pool my brain power with his. "Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I don't think the general public has internet access in this world."

_...Good grief. He's right. When you said an old American TV show, you really did mean _old_, didn't you, Haruhi?_

"I suppose we'll have to look it up when we're back in the standard world."

"Get to it, then. Get us out of here."

He smiled. "Why the rush? Time here is not in sync with the real world, so we won't be missed by anyone; however long we're here, we'll return at the same time we left. Let's relax and enjoy a couple days more here, at least."

"This is no time for your jokes."

"I'm quite serious. Don't you see? Miss Suzumiya has given us an all-expenses-paid vacation from the real world. We can have real detective adventures with the complete certainty that they will always end happily. As a bonus, you get to be Miss Suzumiya's boss for a change. And I'm certainly enjoying my romantic subplot with Miss Asahina."

_Romantic subpl__ot? __Hey__._ The little scene from a few minutes ago, during the brief lull in my fight with Haruhi: "Herbert Koizumi" and "Agnes Asahina" getting lost in each other's eyes. "What did you do with her, you bastard."

"Calm down. You really shouldn't be so possessive about all the SOS Brigade women. Fair enough when it's Miss Suzumiya, but to cast your net over them all speaks ill of your intentions."

I slammed my hands down on my desk. "Damn it, Koizumi, Miss Asahina doesn't even know who she is right now! If there were any law books on pocket dimensions or whatever you call them, having sex with her under these circumstances would be considered date rape!"

He only shook his head. "Now you're blowing things out of proportion. You haven't lost your trust in Miss Suzumiya, have you? Then you must believe, even if I do not, that she would never create a situation which would lead us to lose our virginities under a false sense of our own identities."

"Just answer my question!"

"I didn't hear a question. But if you're asking what I think you are, it's not the sort of question a gentleman answers about a lady, is it?"

"Koizumi...!" I raised a fist.

"Very well. Miss Asahina and I haven't even kissed."

"Thank you," I said, irritated. "I'm really not in the mood for games."

He shrugged. "I wasn't trying to provoke you. As I said, if you just relax and enjoy this world Miss Suzumiya has provided for us..."

"You think this is all just another fun SOS Brigade activity? Do you know what case Haruhi is out there working on now?"

Koizumi looked a little embarrassed. "I'm afraid I didn't follow that part of your argument. Something about murdering someone?"

"An old man has hired someone to murder him, and he's paying her to witness it so his heirs can cash in on his life insurance. Doesn't sound to me like Haruhi is here to just have a good time."

"Hmm. No," Koizumi admitted, allowing himself a rare straight face. "I had thought, from Miss Suzumiya's storming into the reception with a wet skirt and shaving cream on her leg for instance, that we were in a comedy. But even a drama can have its share of comedic moments."

"Right. So put those esper powers to use and get us out of here."

"Impossible. I've told you, this isn't closed space. So far as I can see, there are only two ways we can leave this realm: allow the entire scenario to run its course, or convince Miss Suzumiya to end it early. The first course is problematic because the scenario may not _have_ an ending; as you said, Miss Suzumiya may intend this as our new home. As for the second, bear in mind that we can't discuss the issue with her directly. As she just demonstrated, she will refuse to believe any claims that we are not in our own world."

This was starting to feel very frustrating. "So I have to apologize for yelling at her Monday, is that it? Or are you going to push for a confession of love again?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Logical suggestions, and perhaps things worth trying if all else fails, but I wouldn't expect them to work in this case. Remember, Miss Suzumiya has not only placed us in this world, she has placed us in the roles of its cast. She has been feeding us their character traits and dialogue, so that we may act out this TV series. Whatever her reasons for opening this production, she will probably not respond well to our breaking character."

Probably true. I thought back to how she reacted earlier when I arranged my seat to be how it was when we talk to each other in homeroom. As usual, Haruhi had picked out the game, and she expected us to play by the rules she set.

And there was another thing to be concerned about. "Where's Nagato?"

"An excellent question," Koizumi nodded. "Given that the rest of the brigade are employed at the SOS Detective Agency, one would expect her to be as well. Either Miss Suzumiya has excluded her from this adventure, or she has broken character and left us."

"Or she's in trouble." _Since neither of the possibilities you suggested fit at all with Haruhi or Nagato's natures._

"She could be, but in what role? Why wouldn't Miss Suzumiya give her a part in the SOS Detective Agency with us?"

"I don't know, but we have to find her. Haruhi too, before she goes through with this murder witness thing. Come on."

I swept out of my office towards the entrance of the SOS Detective Agency, Koizumi trailing behind me. I didn't know how I was going to convince Haruhi to drop this case, especially while staying in character as "Kyon Hayes", but I had to try. Damn it, we were just high school students. We shouldn't even be involved with things like assisted suicides.

"O-oh, Herbert...!" Miss Asahina called out.

"No time now, Agnes." Koizumi clenched a fist proudly in front of his chest. "Mr. Hayes needs my assistance on a case!"

"Oh..."

Koizumi was really relishing his part in this little production, it seemed. I was still struggling to understand what sort of person "Mr. Hayes" was. And I certainly didn't care for being the boss. "If Har- If Ms. Addison calls, tell her I'm rethinking Mr. Everett's case, and not to go anywhere until I get there!"

"Okay... You and Herbert have fun on your case..." she answered meekly.

_Have fun? Fun?! Good grief._

Once we were out in the hall, Koizumi asked, "Do you know where Miss Suzumiya is?"

"She'll probably want to get some sleep before going to meet Mr. Everett, so she should be home for a few hours." I slowed my stride. "...Huh."

"Something wrong?"

"Why would I think that Haruhi would necessarily want to sleep? The job is for 8:05 p.m., not exactly a late night assignment. And I shouldn't know where 'Ms. Addison' lives, but I do."

"Miss Suzumiya has infused us with all the knowledge of the characters we're playing. To use my analogy of the TV series set again, we've been handed scripts for the current episode and character bibles for the roles we're acting out."

I pushed the button for the elevator. "Well, that's confusing."

"Forgive me, but I really don't know how to make my explanation simpler."

"No, I mean the thing itself is confusing. I've got all these memories and feelings floating around in my head, and I have to stop and think about it to tell which ones are mine and which ones are Hayes'."

"I see." The doors opened, and we stepped inside. Koizumi pushed the button for the lobby. "My esper abilities make it a little easier to sort out, but it may help if you don't think about it much when you don't need to be yourself. Mr. Hayes' impulses should flow to you naturally. Like just now, when you knew Ms. Addison's home address by virtue of the fact that Mr. Hayes knows it."

That wasn't really the issue. I prefer to have my head be my own and no one else's, thank you. I have enough garbage to sift through as it is. "So, you really think Haruhi brought us here because I yelled at her on Monday?"

"When did I say that? Certainly, it's a possibility, but if I were expecting any reaction to your yelling at her, it would be the creation of closed space. Perhaps Miss Suzumiya is simply trying to insert a little drama into our lives."

"That doesn't make sense either. I'll admit Haruhi hasn't been completely happy this past week, but she hasn't been that _bored_ in a long while." I heard the elevator doors open. "The SOS Brigade's activities keep her mind occupied, so what... what... _What the hell?!_"

What was I looking at? Well, that could easily be summed up in one word: nothing. But somehow that seems inadequate. When you're looking out of an open elevator and see only a yawning blackness, a complete absence of anything, the sheer _nothingness_ seems like something that could reach out and pull you in, swallow you. The blackness of the deepest pit was nothing compared to this. This was total nonexistence.

It wasn't until the elevator doors closed again that I became aware that I had my back pressed against the opposite side of the elevator and had stopped breathing. I began to pant for air.

And Koizumi, damn him, calmly stepped forward and pressed the button for the detective agency's floor again. "I had feared something like this. It is just as I said when I first gave you that analogy; Miss Suzumiya has created enough 'sets' to play out the scenes of the TV series, and not bothered to create anything beyond that. Evidently, Hayes and Herbert did not leave the building to go after Addison during this episode. Not at this point, at least."

"Wh... whuh... Wait a second! Are you telling me Haruhi walked out of here into _that?_"

"Certainly not. She probably jumped straight to the Addison home as soon as she pushed the button for the elevator. TV shows don't cover most journeys from place to place; you simply see a character leave one place, then arrive at another in a later scene, and your mind fills in the blanks. In the same way, I'm sure if you ask Miss Suzumiya about how she got back home, she'll say something about a car drive that never happened, simply because her subconsciousness will have created a vague memory to satisfy the logic that if she left the SOS Detective Agency and later arrived home, then she must have traveled between the two."

_My head hurts._ "I think I understood about one sentence of that."

The elevator doors opened again, and it was to my profound relief that I saw that outside them was a normal floor. Even if it was the one we just left. We stepped out into the hall, and I can tell you that I am not getting on _that_ elevator again without a very good reason.

"All you really need to do is remember that we're essentially inside a TV show," Koizumi said. "Miss Suzumiya reached the elevator and jumped from one scene to the next. We do not have a scene outside this building just yet, so there is no means for us to switch locations."

"We're stuck here, is what you're saying."

"For the time being."

I didn't completely trust Koizumi's theory, because if we could only play out scenes from the TV series, then how were we having this conversation? But arguing the metaphysics with him would only give me a headache. "So what do we do now?"

"You can try calling Miss Suzumiya, of course. There's a slim chance that you'll catch her between her arriving at home and going to sleep. Other than that, all we can do is wait for the plot to reunite us with her or Miss Nagato."

"Just wait? While Haruhi involves herself in a murder?"

Koizumi shook his head. "It's not a real murder. As far as my esper abilities can detect, the only living beings within this pocket realm are those of us in the SOS Brigade. Everyone else is simply an automaton programmed to follow the episode's script."

"Mr. MacGillicudy and Ms. Edwards aren't just automatons!" I objected.

He blinked. "There you go. You're channeling Mr. Hayes quite effectively. To him, MacGillicudy and the others are important people, people he cares about. But to Kyon, they're just characters."

"That's..." I was going to continue in the vein of righteous anger, but I realized that he was right. I shouldn't care about these people – these characters. I paused to peek through the front window of the agency at them. My eyes fell upon Miss Asahina. "I guess we should tell her about what's going on."

"Actually, I think it's better that we don't," Koizumi said, folding his arms. "Her time travel ability would be useless in a realm where time as we know it does not exist, and she'll probably be too emotional to assist you and I in figuring things out."

The office phone rang, and Miss Asahina picked it up. "SOS Detective Agency.

_"Has a psycho killer  
__gone amok in your town?  
__We'll bring him in  
__Our specialty's killer clowns_

_Are you an illegal alien  
__far from their home planet?  
__We'll take your case and we won't judge  
__because we're all equal, damn it!"_

Koizumi's usual smile reasserted itself on his face. "And she does seem to be enjoying the answering of phones."

"You'd just better keep your hands off of her."

"Of course. That is, unless the script calls for it."

"I don't care what the damn script says," I snapped. "If you take advantage of her in any way, I'll..."

"Yes?" Koizumi's smile seemed to add, "I'm only teasing, you know."

But I didn't trust that smile. And in my moment of hesitation, inspiration struck me. "...I'll tell Haruhi about it when we get out of here. You know she'll believe me, and she won't care for anyone messing with her favorite toy. She may even throw you out of the club."

He cocked his head at me. "...You're not a man to be trifled with, are you?" He shrugged. "Well, don't worry. However much I might pine for Miss Asahina as 'Herbert', as myself I wish only to protect her, just like you."

_Yeah, I'll bet._

I returned to my office, sat at my desk, and phoned Haruhi. It rang, and rang, and left me with nothing but the answering machine. Again. Just like...

No, I reminded myself. I wasn't dealing with the same Haruhi here. Well, technically I was, but she was following the same script she'd provided us. If she wasn't answering the phone, she probably just wasn't home, and if she was home, she only wasn't answering because Addison wouldn't. But that didn't mean I couldn't get through to the Haruhi I knew.

Beep. "Haruhi, it's Kyon." Stay calm. Remember, blowing up at her on a phone message is what got us into this mess. "Pick up if you're there. I just want to talk to you." But what could I say? What I wanted to say was that she should stop this other-dimensional nonsense and talk about whatever was bothering her, like a normal human being. Maybe ask her why the hell she couldn't just apologize to Miss Asahina, when that would make everyone happy and let everything go back to normal. But that would be breaking character. What would Hayes say that might make her change her mind? "I think you're making a big mistake. Telling yourself you have the right to decide when a person should live and when they should die is a road you can't turn off of once you start heading down it. I'm scared of what you might do if you start thinking that way. ...Please, just call me back and talk to me, okay?"

I hung up. It sounded more like me than Hayes; I got the feeling that Hayes hadn't tried calling Addison. At least I hadn't said anything that actually violated the rules of this world.

Speaking of which, it was amazing to think that it was once this difficult to get in touch with someone. Dammit, Haruhi, why couldn't you have put us in a TV show from an era with cell phones?


	5. Witness for the Execution pt2

\- Chapter 5: Witness for the Execution (part 2) -

I finished the day's work, pointless though it seemed now that I knew the SOS Detective Agency was just a fictional entity, and got up to go home.

"Haruhi didn't call, did she?" I asked Miss Asahina.

She shook her head sadly, as if she understood my concern.

I stopped by Koizumi's desk. "Do you want to sleep over?" Ordinarily there was no one I'd less want to have a sleepover with than Koizumi. I'd even rather have Haruhi over at my house. But anything was preferable to sleeping alone in a house that belonged to a fictional character.

"Not a good idea," Koizumi replied. "Given the way drama works, things such as Miss Suzumiya paying you a late night visit, which would be exceedingly unlikely to happen in the real world, are reasonably probable in this world. We cannot allow her to discover us in such an out-of-character situation."

_I guess that makes sense. A late night visit, huh?_ I glanced at the clock. 6:30. If I went straight home, there was a chance Haruhi could visit me before doing the job for Mr. Everett. It was a long shot, but this was a drama show, after all.

There was one thing, though. "The elevator," I said weakly.

"I assure you, there is nothing to fear. You're meant to go home now, so the elevator will work normally for you."

So I dismissed the staff, who had been real troopers in staying late, and went out the door. I got on the elevator with a bunch of my employees, got off at the lobby, and drove home. I went inside, changed into my pajamas, and got into bed.

Or at least, it felt like that's what happened. If Koizumi was telling the truth, the reality was I'd just "jumped" from the agency to the Hayes bed, and my memories filled in the blanks. That would explain why I never felt the slightest trepidation when the elevator doors opened this time, why the experience of driving a car didn't faze me, and why I didn't feel any more disorientation with the house I was living in. Because none of it had actually happened, and my memory was just reading off of Haruhi's script.

It really was unbelievable that Haruhi was putting us through this crap. For a long while it seemed she'd gotten better, that she had her powers under control. She used them for good things, like helping out ENOZ, and it seemed like no matter how upset she got, she still wouldn't use them to vent her anger or frustration. Then came Nagoshi, an alien being she created just to fulfill her romantic whim, then turned into a normal human when that whim dissolved. I thought he was just a fluke, but now we've got this going on. How did she get such admirable control over herself and then completely lose it?

The more I thought about it, the less I could understand it. I asked myself what had changed, but there had been nothing. Koizumi mentioned my coma, but that didn't happen until _after_ Nagoshi. And the stirrings Haruhi showed after she played with ENOZ shouldn't have provoked her to use her power in this reckless way.

No use in wasting time thinking about it. Maybe it hadn't been just one thing that had set her off; life wasn't usually that simple. I got into bed, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.

A hand closed over my mouth. My eyes shot open, and I tried to get up.

But the bedroom light was on, and I saw that it was only Haruhi. She was soaked, like she'd been walking through the rain without an umbrella, but still, only Haruhi. "It's okay," she said.

I didn't move, and she took her hand away from my mouth. My first impulse was to ask what the hell she was doing in my bedroom, but the look in her eyes told me she wasn't just here for a laugh.

She looked at me silently for a minute. "I know you said... that you didn't want to be involved in this." I'd never heard her voice sound like this before. Like all her childhood dreams and games had come to an end. "That it was wrong, that it wasn't the sort of thing we should be involved with..."

I sat up. "What happened?"

"...that it would be something that would be hard to get into and then walk away from. I know you said all that. So I feel funny now, coming to you to talk about this..."

"Will you just tell me what happened?"

She couldn't face me anymore. She sat on the edge of my bed, facing straight forward, allowing me not even a glimpse of her eyes as she said, "I killed him."

Now she was really pissing me off. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I killed him."

_Could I have just one conversation with Haruhi that doesn't open with either an insane suggestion or some totally ridiculous exaggeration of the facts? Please? _"Listen, you didn't kill him, okay? I don't agree with what you did, but you didn't kill him. You just... didn't save him."

She shook her head. "No, that's not it. I did it. I killed the man."

"I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand," she snapped, getting up from the bed. "The plug got pulled on the old guy's life support, and I just happened to be the idiot who tripped over the cord!"

I sat there and waited for her to make sense.

I didn't have long to wait. As if that one explosion had laid waste to all the chaotic nonsense inside her, when she spoke again her voice was quiet and relatively rational. "I went over to the nursing home. Got there a little early. I was going to give Mr. Everett his witness. I really thought that what he was doing was what he had to do. That he'd been through enough for one lifetime, paid his dues, and that he had a right to finally call it quits. But I couldn't go through with it."

I was trying to make sense of this. Not what she was saying, but the way she was saying it. Her tone was suffused with an intense feeling of shame. Every word that came out of her, she sounded on the verge of breaking down. I wanted to explain it by telling myself again that this wasn't really Haruhi, it was Addison, but I knew that wasn't true. It may have been Addison who did whatever it was she was telling me about, but it was Haruhi who was feeling the shame. She wasn't just reading from a script, like Koizumi's analogy would say she was; Haruhi wasn't this good an actor. Whether it was a real trauma or just a scene from an old TV series, something was tearing her up inside.

"I walked into the room to tell him that... and he's not moving. So I go over to the machine, to... to make sure that it's on, and... I turn on a knob on the machine, and nothing happens, and I turn another knob..."

And that was as far as she could go. She plopped back down on the bed with a sob, one hand over her mouth as if she could hold back what she was about to say, keep it locked away so that it never happened.

"Haruhi..." I felt something painful in my chest at seeing her like this. I wanted to reach over and put my arms around her, and tell her everything was okay, that it wasn't real, that Mr. Everett was nothing but a fictional character and she'd just been playing out a scene from some TV show she'd seen.

But I couldn't tell her that, because she wouldn't believe it. And I sure wasn't going to hug her, for obvious reasons. I didn't even know if the urge to hug her was mine or Hayes'.

She took her hand from her mouth and swallowed. "I feel like... like I have this hole in my stomach. Nothing there. Just cold air rushing through."

_Damn it. Who wrote this crap, anyway? A playful, wisecracking private detective takes on a case to help a man commit suicide, only to accidentally kill the man herself when she shows up for the job? What stupid asshole thought people would want to watch this on TV? Who's responsible for putting Haruhi through this?_

"You didn't mean to do it. It was an accident," I told her. The words came to me so easily that I knew they had to be Hayes'. And they were true. Neither Haruhi nor Ms. Addison had meant to kill anyone. I knew that beyond all shadow of a doubt. "You have to go to the police. Tell them -"

"Tell them what?" she demanded, pulling away from me again. "Tell them a man came into my office, asked me to witness his own murder, and a funny thing happened on the way to the scene of the crime? I've been a detective for a few years now, Kyon. I know what it takes to convict someone of a crime. Fingerprints, prior association with the victim, an eyewitness who saw me crouching over the dead body!"

I won't deny it. Her words shocked me. Though maybe it was only Hayes who was shocked, the grafted-on part of me for whom Mr. Everett's death was real, and not just some scenario cooked up by a writer and shocked into a semblance of life by a teenage girl with power that she didn't even know about.

But the shock made me stop and realize that I'd asked the wrong question. Whoever wrote this episode, they weren't responsible for this. It was Haruhi. She didn't have to choose this TV series, and she sure didn't have to choose this episode. Hayes and Addison had had fun adventures, too. I remembered them. Why didn't she choose one of those, instead of this horrible tragedy?

Why was she putting herself through this?

_Is it guilt? Over Nagoshi, maybe? She's only aware that she rewrote his existence subconsciously, so her subconscious is expressing that guilt through this little drama?_

"What are you going to do?" I said. Hayes wanted to know what she was going to do about being blamed for Mr. Everett's death. I wanted to know what she was going to do about her guilt. I didn't want to think about it, but if part of her felt as guilty over what she'd done to Nagoshi as Addison felt over what she'd done to Mr. Everett... Maybe she'd chosen this episode because she empathized with Everett's desire to commit suicide.

We both heard a noise and glanced at the window. An oscillating red light was shining in. Police.

"Oh, God," Haruhi moaned, burying her face in her elbow.

The doorbell rang.

We looked at each other. _What is this? Am I supposed to turn her in now? Does she want me to punish her for what she's done? __She heard how mad I got about what she did to Miss Asahina, and figured I was the one who could lock her away for what she did to Nagoshi?_

"I'd better get the door," I said to her, and headed downstairs.

_ Sorry, Haruhi. If this whole scene is a metaphor for whatever guilt you feel over Nagoshi, then all I can say is this: You didn't know what you were doing to Nagoshi, any more than Addison knew turning that knob would kill Mr. Everett. Even if I want you to take control of your powers and start using them responsibly, I'll be damned if I let you punish yourself for misusing a power that you never asked for and no one even told you you had._

I reached the front door and cracked it open. "Who is it?"

"Lieutenant Tappia. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

He held out his badge. After examining it, I undid the little chain latch and opened the door all the way.

Tappia asked his questions. I feigned ignorance of Haruhi's whereabouts, of Mr. Everett's death, and even, a bit impulsively, of the fact that Mr. Everett had hired Haruhi. Of course Tappia had already confirmed that Everett had an appointment at our offices, and that he'd kept it. But if he realized I was withholding information, he didn't push the issue, and he certainly didn't realize Haruhi was there in my very house. And with every lie I told, there was the reassuring feeling that Hayes would have done the same for Addison. It's stupid to feel reassurance from the moral support of a fictional character, I know, but for the time being, Hayes was a part of me.

Before Tappia left, I said, "Could I ask you one question, lieutenant?"

I didn't know how he might react, because I knew for certain that the question I was about to ask wasn't in Haruhi's script, and according to Koizumi this guy was just an automaton, unable to do anything but read his lines. But the lieutenant stopped where he was and listened.

So I continued, "We're looking for someone, um, for a case. Do you know anyone by the name Nagato? Or Yuki?"

At those words, the lieutenant's face transformed. He looked angry. No, beyond angry... He looked vengeful.

"Have a good night, Mr. Hayes," he said for a second time.

Then he left.

I shivered. _Just what is going on here? Did Koizumi lie about the SOS Brigade being the only living beings here? Or has some other entity snuck in without him knowing about it? Or... Could Haruhi be controlling these __automaton__s directly? I guess that would explain the anger, since talking about Nagato is breaking character. But... really, that was more than just anger._

I hadn't forgotten that Haruhi was upstairs, or even been distracted from it; as these thoughts were running through my head, I was closing the front door and heading back up. Anxious as I was to know Nagato's whereabouts, Haruhi was my first priority for the moment. I still didn't know what her feelings were that would make her put on this horrible play, but no one should have to suffer like this.

I reached my bedroom door. "Haruhi?"

Rain was pattering onto the floor. Because the window was open. She was gone.


	6. Witness for the Execution conclusion

\- Chapter 6: Witness for the Execution (conclusion) -

I don't know how I got to sleep that night. Maybe I _didn't_. Maybe I just jumped scenes again, popping back to the SOS Detective Agency. I really didn't want to think about it. Jumping from one dramatic scene to another was too close a metaphor for what my life had been like since I met Haruhi.

I walked through the door of the agency, forced out a mumbled "Good morning, Miss Asahina," in response to her usual "Good morning, Mr. Hayes!" and headed right to Koizumi's cubicle.

"Mr. Koizumi, my office," I said. "Now."

"Right away, Mr. Hayes!"

As I strode to my office, I noticed yet another odd thing about this world: My shoulders were held straight, firm, back. You could set a cup of tea on each one and I wouldn't spill a drop. I was walking like a general in front of his troops.

And try as I might, I couldn't get my shoulders to relax again until I'd stepped into my office and closed the door behind me. For a private detective, Hayes was incredibly uptight, it seemed.

"So, did you get that late night visit from Miss Suzumiya?" Koizumi asked.

I told him everything.

He nodded. "An interesting development."

_That's your reaction?_ "I should punch you."

"You're overreacting. Remember, this is all an episode of a TV show. Therefore, in all likelihood, by the end we will be happily reunited with Miss Suzumiya, who will be none the worse for the wear."

"Yeah?" My insides were churning. "And what if Haruhi decided to rewrite that part of the script? Or what if the show's writers were using this story to write the Addison character out of the series?"

"What makes you suddenly think Miss Suzumiya might do something so self-destructive? Haven't you always held her to be an unstoppable force who never questions herself?"

"You didn't see the way she was last night."

"Ah, yes. Naturally she'd only allow you to see something like that. If it's any reassurance, though, no closed spaces have opened up."

I looked around. "We can get closed space in here?"

"I don't see why not. They always manifest in close proximity to her. In any case, I think this situation can best be addressed from the optimistic angle, so let's assume that Miss Suzumiya is not in any real danger and that we can resolve things in the same way that TV characters would."

"What the hell does that mean?"

He smiled. "This is a detective show, is it not? And we have a mystery on our hands. What we need to do is solve the mystery."

"What mystery? Haruhi told us exactly how the guy died." Then it hit me. "Or... how she thought he died. She did seem too distraught to make that kind of judgment. What am I saying? Haruhi's never someone whose judgment can be trusted."

"Keep going."

"Mr. Everett hired someone to kill him. Who's to say he didn't do it? He could have come early, before Haruhi."

"Exactly. In fact, this is a highly probable scenario. I wasn't privy to your conversation, but I'm sure Mr. Everett would not have told you what his payment arrangements were with his assassin. We can therefore hypothesize that he was assured of getting payment regardless of when the deed was performed. So why should he wait for a witness to arrive? Murderers generally prefer to not be seen."

I nodded slowly for a second. It didn't sound right. "...I don't think so. Mr. Everett seemed to have everything carefully thought out. He wouldn't have set things up so his killer would have reason to betray him."

"All the same, you believe someone other than Miss Suzumiya may have killed him, yes?"

I nodded more readily this time. "So what do we do?"

"The obvious course is to visit the scene of the crime."

* * *

Naturally, the police had forbidden anyone from accessing the crime scene, but a hundred bucks was enough to persuade an aide to show me and Koizumi into Mr. Everett's room with an admonition not to touch anything. It was strange. Ordinarily, the sum of $100 would hold no real meaning for me. I'd calculate a ballpark figure of what that was in yen, but of itself it would mean nothing. Certainly I couldn't guess what $100 might be worth in whatever era this TV show took place in. But in my current role, $100 instinctively felt like the right sum of money to offer for the bribe.

We went in and surveyed the room. It looked like an ordinary nursing home room, or what I'd expect one to look like. A windows with curtains, a table with a bunch of family photos, a bed with slippers next to it, a television set, some medical equipment... No blood, no mess, nothing to indicate this was a murder scene.

Except that the control panel near the window was covered in fingerprint powder. I approached it first; it was the only object in the room that I knew to have some involvement with the case. I took a hard look at it.

It meant nothing to me. I thought maybe Hayes might know and communicate it to me through Haruhi's script, or whatever it was, but all I saw when I looked at it was some incomprehensible techno gadget. I hadn't the slightest clue what even one of the dozens of knobs on it did. Or who might have turned any of them.

"Well?" My gaze shot up. Koizumi was smiling at me. "Have you figured it out yet, Mr. Hayes?"

"Not even close." I looked around the room one more time: At the curtains, at the bed, at the slippers, at the dresser, at the nightstand. "If there's a clue here, I'm not seeing it. Let's go."

"Don't give up so easily. If 'Ms. Addison' didn't kill Everett, there must be some evidence of it here."

"Well, I'm not a detective." I wanted to slump into a chair, but I remembered that the aide had said not to touch anything. So I just rested the side of my face against my hand.

"Oh? You and Miss Suzumiya solved our little remote island mystery quite handily."

"Right, me and Miss Suzumiya," I pointed out. "She's the one who picked up on all the clues and came up with all the theories. All I did was point out which theories didn't make sense. I'm basically useless without her." _Arrgh, did I just say that?_ "At detective work, I mean." _Better, but still cringe-inducing._

His smile took on a different hue. "That simply means you compliment each other well. Your common sense and her imagination combine to yield insight and ingenuity. And common sense isn't useless on its own. Much less effective, but not useless. You just need to put it in the right perspective. Imagine Miss Suzumiya presenting to you the theory that she is responsible for Mr. Everett's death. Now point out what's wrong with her theory."

_T__h__at's worth a try, I guess... Wait a second._ "Koizumi, you've already figured it out, haven't you?" I scowled at him.

He shrugged. "I merely have an intuition that the answer is here. Nothing more."

"You bastard. TV show or no, right now Haruhi thinks she's guilty of murder, and you're sitting on proof that she's not!"

Koizumi wasn't moved by my anger in the slightest. "If you think freeing Miss Suzumiya from her guilt is that urgent, then calm down and think about the problem. She meant for _you_ to solve this. Herbert Koizumi isn't even supposed to be here."

_What... so Koizumi giving me the answer would be another case of breaking character? What does that matter, since Haruhi isn't even here?_

But arguing with Koizumi obviously wasn't getting me anywhere. I looked around the room again. _Okay, let's see... Haruhi said she walked in, saw Mr. Everett wasn't moving... went over to the machine, tried turning a knob, tried turning one or two or a dozen more, and then someone came in and saw her... But that can't be what happened, because..._

_ Because..._

"Damn it," I snapped. "There isn't any contradiction here! What Haruhi says happened may not have actually happened, but there's no reason why it couldn't have. Everything she says she did fits with what's at the scene. I've got nothing."

"Perhaps..." Koizumi formed his words carefully. "Perhaps you shouldn't focus entirely on what Haruhi did. Think about what Mr. Everett did."

_What Mr. Everett did? The man was in a wheelchair, being kept alive by an oxygen tank and machines! He couldn't have even gotten out of bed without assistance, so what could he possibly have -_

It hit me. "The slippers."

Koizumi smiled.

"They're facing the bed... If a man is in a wheelchair, the only way he should be able to take his slippers off is when he's seated on the bed after climbing out of the wheelchair. Which would mean the slippers would be facing _away_ from the bed. But they're facing the bed... as if someone walked up to the bed and took them off." I blinked, and looked back to Koizumi. "What's it mean?"

He shrugged. "Just what you said. Someone wearing the slippers walked up to the bed and took them off."

"Don't be difficult."

"I've told you, this is your case to solve. Use your power of theory-elimination again. Could Mr. Everett's hired assassin have borrowed his slippers?"

"Sure, but why would he? All he needed to do was walk in here, turn a knob, and walk out. Changing shoes would just leave more evidence. The only person who would have any reason to use Mr. Everett's slippers is Mr. Everett himself, and he couldn't walk." Then a thought entered my head against my volition. "...Supposedly."

Koizumi studied me. "What is it?"

"I'm channeling Hayes again, I think. I just came up with a theory without Haruhi's help." I headed out of the room. "Come on. We've got to have a word with Amy Everett."

"Oh? Is she the real killer?"

I didn't dignify Koizumi's feigned ignorance with reply. I'm sure he had already figured out that there _was_ no real killer.

* * *

After several knocks, Amy Everett came to the door – wearing a night robe. For a split second I wondered if she was crazy, but then I noticed it was indeed completely dark out. _The hell? It was the middle of the day when we left the nursing home, and we came straight here._

Ms. Everett was looking at me expectantly. "I'm sorry about your father," I said.

"Are you?" she said, with undisguised skepticism.

_Yeah, I'm sorry the miserable buzzard dragged Haruhi into this. But show respect for your elders, so they say._ "Of course I am. That's why I came here. Ms. Everett... Why didn't your father tell anyone he could walk?"

She lowered her eyes, and stepped back to let us in. As we entered, Koizumi had his hands in his coat pockets with the thumbs sticking out. He was in the role.

"Ms. Everett," I pressed. "Why would a man who can walk constrain himself to a wheelchair?"

"...May I ask who told you that?"

"Of course. No one."

"Then how did you know?"

"I didn't."

Koizumi nodded approval at me, but not in the vaguely condescending way he would in his own identity, more like a young law student watching his teacher dismantle an opposing attorney's case. Amy Everett, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to throw me out the window. "I think it's time for you to go."

"Ms. Everett, I was in your father's room this morning -" _Yes! It was morning! Why the hell is it night now?_ "- and I couldn't help but notice his slippers. They were facing his bed, just as if he'd walked up to it and taken them off."

"Please, Mr. Hayes, I'm not interested in slippers," she choked out, unable to face me. "My father has just passed away..."

I realized I'd misread her facial expression from a few seconds before. It wasn't anger, but grief and a willful denial of the truth behind her father's death. But I couldn't stop now. "Ms. Everett, wouldn't a person in a wheelchair be facing the other way?"

"Mr. Hayes! My father has just been murdered!"

"I think your father just committed suicide." That silenced her. "Ms. Everett, he wanted to die. He asked us to witness his death, but I think what he actually wanted was someone to blame for his death. When Ms. Addison went into his room, he wasn't moving. She thought she killed him when she turned the knobs, but what if he was already dead when she arrived?"

"Please! Leave!"

"We're not going anywhere, lady, until you confess and tell the police that Ms. Addison is innocent!" Koizumi broke in, jabbing an accusatory finger at her.

I turned and glared at him. "Mr. Koizumi, do you mind?"

He mumbled "Sorry" and took a step back. The extent to which he was playing the part of Herbert Koizumi was rather disturbing. With his mad enthusiasm and almost canine devotion to "Ms. Addison", he was acting like a hyperactive anime character rather than himself, and judging from his performances at the cultural festival and in the SOS Brigade's film, in any normal situation the only character Koizumi was capable of playing was himself. I knew that Koizumi was just allowing the "script" to dictate his words and actions so that we could get to this episode's happy ending without rocking the boat, but it was still unnerving to see someone I knew so well act so completely unfamiliar.

Well, I guess I was doing the same thing myself. Interrogating a woman several times my age about her dead father was not something I felt very capable of doing, so it was good to have someone else take the reins, choosing my words and shouldering the worst of the emotional responses.

"Ms. Everett," I continued. "Your father could walk. Couldn't he have simply walked over to the control panel and turned off his life support by himself?"

"Please..."

"I know it's been hard." As Hayes, I felt sorry for her, and even though I knew she wasn't a real person, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her as myself, too. But if we were going to get Haruhi back, and ultimately convince her to take us back to the real world, we needed to get through this miserable scene. "You've just lost someone important to you. I..." I put an arm across my eyes. "...I'm losing someone important to me, too."

I hated to say that, especially in front of Koizumi. But even though it was obviously Hayes' line, it was true for me, too. I knew from experience that when you take Haruhi out of the picture, the whole world turns back to gray. Of herself, she was tiresome, like a novelty song whose quirks are cute and amusing at first but become grating through repeated listens. But she made exciting things happen. If you wanted a world that wasn't ordinary and dull, you just had to put up with her. And however often Koizumi said that this was just a run-through of a TV show, I wasn't ready to stake Haruhi's life on that assumption. Even if Haruhi was playing the exact game Koizumi theorized she was, that wouldn't stop her from tossing out the rules or even pulling the board off the table. I wasn't going to feel reassured until we had her once again standing in front of us, safe and sound.

When I took my arm away again, Ms. Everett was looking at me timidly.

* * *

She told what she knew. She'd come to the nursing home for an unannounced visit one day and saw her father walking. He was having some difficulty with it, but he was walking. He got mad and made her promise not to tell anyone.

I passed the word on to Lieutenant Tappia. He'd found Haruhi's fingerprints on the control panel, but he ordered it checked for a second set of prints. Sure enough, Lawrence Everett's were on there. The bastard set Haruhi up as a fall guy for his own death.

I have to admit, though, I liked the twist. Nobody murdered anybody. If TV writers had any real sense of compassion, they would use twists like that more often. One reason I don't like detective shows is that they treat an arrest as a resolution to everything. I guess that's the best solution you can hope for in the real world, but my reaction is, you caught the guy who did it, so what? It doesn't undo the murder.

Maybe that was the real reason why Haruhi chose this episode. She didn't want anyone to get murdered – the remote island mystery had taught me that – so she picked an episode where nobody did.

Of course, there were still two huge problems. No one got murdered, but a suicide was pretty horrible in its own right. Amy Everett still had to deal with the fact of her father having taken his own life. Not to mention the rest of the Everett family. If they were just TV characters, like Koizumi said, then no big deal, but is this what Haruhi wished for? When she argued in favor of helping Mr. Everett kill himself, was she just having fun with a TV show that she enjoyed, or were those her real feelings? How about when she felt guilty about killing him afterwards? Script, or real feelings? Kind of a crucial issue given that she could make everyone over a certain age drop dead if she wished for it.

The only way to get answers was to find Haruhi, which was huge problem number two.

The days seemed to fly by. I said something about this to Koizumi in between calls to newspapers. I was placing personal ads telling Haruhi that everything had been cleared up and she could come out of hiding (being without internet is a pain in the ass). He smiled and said we were undoubtedly doing a lot of skipping ahead in time for this part of the episode.

"We may even be in the middle of a montage," he added.

The notion made me feel nauseous. "I want to get out of here and search the streets for her. But then the elevator would just open up into the lobby of nothingness again, wouldn't it?"

"Most likely. Moreover, I advise you not to rush the search for Miss Suzumiya. You keep forgetting that the normal rules of time do not apply here. We can only see Miss Suzumiya again when we next have a scene with her. Until then, in a way, Miss Suzumiya doesn't even exist."

"Huh?"

"Perhaps I'm leaping over too many conclusions for you to follow. Let me go back to the beginning." He took out a notepad and pencil and drew a straight line with a dot on it. "Here is a normal timeline, with this point representing our present. Under normal circumstances, we can be said to travel along the straight line of time, experiencing every tiniest nanosecond along the line from the moment we are conceived until the moment we die. Don't worry about how Miss Asahina's time travel fits into this illustration. Now, in this pocket realm, the timeline is more like this."

Below the ordinary timeline, Koizumi drew three fragmented lines, one with a dot, another with an arrow.

"As I explained to you before, the continuous experience that we have in normal time exists here only as an illusion. You undoubtedly remember driving home from work yesterday, but it probably did not actually happen." He tapped some of the empty spaces between the line fragments in his drawing. "Thus, there are gaps in your individual timeline. However, it is possible for other characters to have experienced things at the same time that you would have been driving home. For example, if Agnes – that is, Miss Asahina – had agreed to have a drink with me after work, then we would have had a scene together. So in this pocket realm, we each have our own present. In this diagram, the point still represents our present, where we are talking inside your office, while the arrow represents Miss Suzumiya's present. Do you follow me so far?"

_...I really need to get into the habit of taking an aspirin before listening to one of Koizumi's explanations._ "Haruhi's present isn't on a line," I observed, not knowing what that meant.

"Excellent. You're picking right up on it. Yes, while the two of us are having a scene right now, at 10:09 a.m., Miss Suzumiya does not necessarily have a scene set at 10:09. She may be jumping, for example, from a scene which ended at 10 p.m. yesterday to a scene which starts at 8 a.m. tomorrow. If this is the case, then from our current perspective, Haruhi Suzumiya does not exist. The paradox is that from a story perspective, she does have a location right now. We just have no way of reaching it. Suppose that at 10 p.m. yesterday she checked into a motel. The scene ended, and at 8 a.m. tomorrow she has a scene in which she sees your classified ad, checks out of the motel, and heads here. Logically, then, where must she be in the intervening time?"

"At the motel."

"Correct. But in actuality she is not there, because this pocket realm only plays out relevant scenes."

"Wait a minute. Haruhi is the one who created all this! Why should she be limited to living in just a few scenes?"

"The answer to that should be obvious to one who knows her as well as you do." Koizumi tilted his head. "Given the choice, wouldn't Miss Suzumiya prefer to live out just the exciting scenes in life, and skip over the boring parts in between?"

_I guess she would. For that matter, so would I._

"Now, think back to the day you broke the case. Did you notice that though we left Golden Hour Nursing Home in the morning, we didn't arrive at Amy Everett's home until the middle of the night?"

"Yeah. What was up with that?"

"That was a result of our rushing things. According to the script, Hayes didn't figure things out until that night, or perhaps a later night. But either because I gave you too many hints, or because you were drawing upon your own deductive skills in addition to those of Hayes, you solved it much earlier. This meant that we left for Amy Everett's house much earlier. However, because the scene at her house is scripted to take place at night, that's when it took place." He gestured to one of the line fragments on his diagram. "You could say that we forced the scene at the nursing home backwards along the timeline."

_This is too much._ "How do you know all this?"

He shrugged. "Guesswork."

"...One of these days, you're going to push me too far."

"Still, the mere possibility of this theory makes clear why we shouldn't hurry our search, does it not? This realm runs by Miss Suzumiya's rules, and we run grave risks if we don't abide by them."

"Screw Haruhi's rules." I stood up and slammed a hand down on my desk. "You're saying we can force a scene backwards along the timeline? Then I say we force a scene back to Haruhi's present, to her location."

Koizumi shook his head, smiling. "Always ready to move Heaven and Earth for the sake of your lady love." I leveled a warning fist at his face. "Even if I didn't think what you are suggesting is dangerous, the only way to make it happen is to know where Miss Suzumiya is and go there. Since we don't know -"

"I know where she is." I said this without thinking, so I added, "Probably."

"Please, elaborate."

I brushed past Koizumi and out the doors of my office. "It's possible that Haruhi is skipping from the scene where she told me about Mr. Everett's death directly to one where we find her or to one where she dies, right?" I wasn't even bothering to look to see if Koizumi was following me. Had to be the Hayes instincts at work.

"I suppose so... The episode's writers might have chosen to let Ms. Addison's whereabouts remain a mystery while focusing on Mr. Hayes' quest to clear her name. It's a good literary approach."

"I think that's what happened. Even if there were intervening scenes with Addison in the original episode, Haruhi would have skipped them."

"Why? Don't you think she would enjoy a good fugitive scene?"

Because Haruhi isn't a loner. Never has been. That's why she tried joining every club at North High. That's why she formed the SOS Brigade. That's why she said dressing up in costumes is no fun without Miss Asahina. That's why she brought us with her into this pocket realm. She never wants to have adventures on her own. So if there's any part of this scenario where she's all by herself, she's just going to skip over it.

But there wasn't time to explain that to Koizumi, and it was none of his business anyway. So I ignored his question: "This means Haruhi doesn't have a place to hide from the police in her role as Haruhi Addison. You would say that because of that, she doesn't exist right now."

As I strode out of the agency, Miss Asahina called, "O-O-Oh, Mr. Hayes...! I guess you and Herbert are going out on another assignment..."

The door shut behind us. "I think you're wrong," I continued, though I felt bad for ignoring Miss Asahina. "Even if she's not having a scene right now, there has to be somewhere Haruhi can be found, or the logic of this place falls apart. If she's doing anything dramatic, she'll have a place to do it. If she's just skipping to a scene where we find her, she'll have a place to wait for that, too. And it's not going to be a place from this TV show she's recreated, because then she'd have to play out a scene there without us. It's going to be a place from the real world, somewhere that she feels safe and has fun."

"If you're wrong about any of this," Koizumi pointed out, "you'll come face-to-face with the wall of nonexistence again."

I was ready to take that chance. So long as I didn't walk into it, it wouldn't hurt me, right?

"There is also a much greater danger. You know Miss Suzumiya doesn't like it when we break character in here. If you find her before you're meant to find her, in a place where she isn't meant to be found, there is no telling how she'll react."

Now _that_ worried me. However: "Koizumi, Haruhi may have decided to kill herself. She just wasn't right those last few days before she brought us here, and when she told me about killing Mr. Everett she was so full of guilt and self-loathing. I just can't risk leaving her by herself right now." I pushed the elevator button.

Koizumi sighed. "Very well. Then I'll just have to have a scene with Miss Asahina while you're gone." He quickly answered my glare, "Nothing scandalous, of course. It's just that if there's no scene taking place at the SOS Detective Agency when you try to come back, you might find it impossible to come back here at all."

That made sense, though I still had to question Koizumi's motives. But why was he saying he could just create a scene with Miss Asahina, when his whole explanation for why we couldn't find Haruhi in a hurry was that we couldn't have unscripted scenes? The elevator doors had opened, though, so there was no time to ask him. Probably he was just messing with me again.

I got in the elevator, selected the lobby, and reviewed my destination. Really, there were several places in the real world which Haruhi would feel were safe and fun, but it would have to be someplace that wasn't tied too closely to the real world, too. A place that could logically exist in the world of the SOS Detective Agency. A place where she could still be "Haruhi Addison" instead of Haruhi Suzumiya. I think I knew where it was.

And if I was wrong, then I'd just go back to the agency's floor, step out of and then back into the elevator, and try somewhere else. No matter how many times I had to face that awful abyss.

When I got off at the lobby, I took a cab. I just gave the cab driver the address and he took me there, even though we were supposedly in the United States of America, and this address was a place in Japan. I paid the man and stepped onto the sidewalk, approaching a very familiar building.

She had to be here. The driver couldn't have brought me here if she weren't.

I entered the cafe and looked around. In the booth at the back was seated a girl. She was facing away from the entrance, but I knew who it was. I walked to the booth and took a seat opposite her.

She started. "Kyon! What are you doing here?"

_I could ask you the same question, you know._

"I don't know, really." She really looked thrown for a loop by my arrival. I couldn't blame her; if what Koizumi said was true, she didn't expect to even exist at this point. "I have to get my morning coffee somewhere, and I wanted to keep an eye on the news... I don't know why I picked this place." She considered. "The wait staff are all Japanese, for some reason. Maybe I feel more comfortable around them."

She didn't seem negatively affected at all by her time as a fugitive. She was wearing a stereotypical trench coat, which looked surprisingly good on her. Her hair was the same as ever, as if we were here for an ordinary brigade meetup.

"Plus, I don't want to go someplace where I'll be recognized. I never even knew this place existed until I went on the run."

She wasn't making any wisecracks, or flirting in any way. This wasn't "Haruhi Addison" I was facing. It was Haruhi, pure and simple.

"I was just about ready to come begging you for a loan." She said this in a way which didn't allow the idea that begging in any way reduced her dignity. "Turns out being on the run is expensive. Even going from place to place by hopping trains, I'm practically broke now. I can hold out a few more days, but unless you've miraculously cleared my name, you're going to need to give me some money." She paused to down the last of her coffee. "Hey, why are you just staring at me like that? Say something!"

I smiled at her. "I'm just glad to see you're okay."

"Oh, like you care. You're just waiting for the right moment to chew me out about how I've dragged the SOS Detective Agency's reputation through the mud with this whole fiasco, aren't you?"

A waitress came up to us and set the bill upon the table. "I'll just take that when you're ready."

Then something happened which gave me the first real glimpse of hope I'd had since becoming "Kyon Hayes": Haruhi stared at the bill for a moment, and then firmly pushed it towards me.

I paid it. I did arrive last, after all.


	7. We Meet Again

\- Chapter 7: We Meet Again -

You might have thought that would be the end of it, that when Haruhi and I walked out of that cafe we'd be back in the real world. I mean, I'd proved that I knew her well enough to find her even in a weird metaphysical other dimension, right? Even doing it ahead of Koizumi, the superpowered esper who makes a living hopping around her head. And I'd shown that no matter how angry I might be with her, I didn't hate her. Shouldn't that have been enough to convince Haruhi that the real world isn't so awful, that she didn't need to bury herself in the fantasy world of a TV show?

But there I was the following morning, not walking up the hill to school, but riding the elevator up to work.

So maybe I needed to rethink the whole idea that my reconciling with Haruhi was the key. Ending up in this pocket realm less than 24 hours after I yelled at her over the phone could be just a coincidence. After all, it wasn't the sort of thing you'd expect to break Haruhi Suzumiya. Her reaction to the voicemail I left was probably a big fat smirk, with plans to humiliate me by playing it in front of the whole SOS Brigade. Heck, that's if she were thinking small. I wouldn't put it past her to find a way to broadcast my pathetic rant over the school's PA. ...Or on local television.

_"Get over yourself already,"_ Haruhi once said to me. _ "I can be in a bad mood without you having anything to do with it."_ And she was right.

It wasn't that Haruhi was a complex person. In fact, she was stupidly simple. The point was, she was too selfish for her state of mind to depend on any one person. When Haruhi can't get something she wants, no matter how trivial, she throws a fit. So there were any number of frustrations that could have prompted her to take us on this other-dimensional trip.

As I stepped out of the elevator, I found myself doing Hayes' now recognizable stiff-shouldered strut. I didn't try to fight it, just went with the flow. Actually, giving it an honest try, I could see that this walk wasn't a matter of being uptight. This walk was confident, professional. It showed the world that you took pride in what you did and wouldn't let down the people who had placed their trust in you. I began to enjoy the feel of it.

Yeah, my mood was actually pretty peppy. Even if it hadn't gotten us out of the pocket realm, I'd acted in time to prevent Haruhi from killing herself. Or maybe she was never going to kill herself, and I'd overreacted. I didn't care; Haruhi didn't end up with slit wrists, and for that I was relieved. And I'll admit, if Haruhi hadn't chosen to put Nagato missing in action and drag us through angsty crap like the Everett case, being inside a detective show might actually be something I'd call fun. Given that, things would have to pick up from here, right?

I opened the door to the agency to be greeted with the sight of Mr. Lewis and Mr. Simmons trading punches. Simmons landed a blow on Lewis that sent him crashing into the copy machine. Lewis, not even stunned, kicked Simmons off of him and back into the wall.

"I-I'm sorry, Mr. Hayes!" Miss Asahina squeaked, running up to me. "It's been simmering for a while -"

"What's going on?" I said, staring at the two viscous combatants.

I wasn't to receive an answer. Miss Asahina grabbed at the two men trying to tear each other apart, shouting, "Stop it, you two! Just stop it!"

It really was something. A lot of craziness went on at SOS Brigade meetings, but at least we never had physical fighting. This was one sorry excuse for a detective agency that I owned.

Somehow the diminutive Ms. Asahina got Mr. Lewis and Mr. Simmons to stop and face me. I think it was my presence rather than Miss Asahina's muscle which made them behave. "What is going on here?" I demanded of them.

They just stared at me in awed silence, and it occurred to me that I was wasting time. Disciplining fictional employees was Hayes' beef, not mine. Right now I needed to take advantage of the fact that Haruhi was here and not on the run from the law, and coax her into putting us back in the real world. Of course, first I'd need to figure out what it was that had made her take us here in the first place.

I looked to Miss Asahina. "I'll be in -"

"- Ms. Addison's office," she finished for me.

I turned away without another word and walked into said office. Only to find things just as insane in there as they were out in the main reception area. Haruhi, wearing a green eyeshade like the ones you see in old movies, was sorting cash into little piles across her desk.

I put two-and-two together. "I don't believe this."

"You'd better believe it," Haruhi grinned. "I've got two big ones riding on Lewis!"

"Addison is just as insane as you are!" I blurted out. "I mean, the real you!"

"Huh?" An eyebrow went up. "You feeling okay, Kyon? Hey," she said, getting up from her chair and approaching me with a look of concern. "That look on your face... Are you telling me no one told you about the big throwdown?"

_This is a dream. We must have gone back to reality after my conversation with Haruhi in the cafe, and now I'm lying in bed dreaming._

"Okay, this isn't exactly kosher – the fight's already started – but I'm going to let you place a bet. How much do you want to lay down?"

This was ludicrous, even for Haruhi. "Haruhi, there are two men fighting with each other in our office!"

"Is that what it was? And I thought they were doing the minute waltz."

A wisecrack. Yeah, she was definitely in the Addison role again. Not that I was doing much better. Part of me was telling myself that I had no real reason to be angry and upset about this, only Hayes did. But damn it, Hayes was right. This was reprehensible and absurd from every angle.

"Fighting in our office," I repeated. "Doesn't that tell you anything? That tells me we have a serious morale problem. The root of it is lack of self-esteem, no sense of accomplishment... and boredom."

_Boredom. Was that it? I dismissed that idea when Koizumi suggested it before, but Haruhi had always been motivated by boredom far more often than any earnest emotion. Maybe everything she'd done this past week__ – __phoning me in the middle of the night to complain that I'd been ignoring her, making me curry bread, attacking Miss Asahina, and last but certainly not least, taking us all into a detective TV show__ – __were just attempts to break out of her latest bout of boredom?_

"Wow..." Haruhi sat on the edge of her desk and put an arm around my shoulder. "I could tell you were bored, Kyon, but I had no idea it went that deep."

I pulled her arm off of me. "Not me. You!"

"Me?" She looked so innocently ignorant that I couldn't stay mad.

Well, I _could_, but I didn't see much sense in it. In her own way, Haruhi was as much a prisoner of this mad world as we were. She had no idea that she'd done this to herself. "Think back, Haruhi. You remember feeling bored recently, don't you? Tired of the same daily routine, getting nothing accomplished?"

It was a blind, desperate shot. So long as she was playing her role, Haruhi had no conscious memory of being a student at North High, which meant she had no conscious memory of the boredom that led her to take us to this "pocket realm". My only two hopes were that I might ring a bell in her subconscious, or get her to step out of her role for a minute, the way she had at the cafe.

"Now hold on a minute." Haruhi held out a hand. "It's true, we haven't had any cases for a while, and we haven't gotten to meet any aliens, espers, time travelers, or sliders. But we're going to soon, I can feel it! We're poised right on the brink of success! Besides, just because this agency hasn't accomplished its mission yet, that doesn't mean it's nothing but boring routine. Even if we never find anything, it's the search itself that's exciting! Can't you see that?"

I couldn't tell for sure whether she was talking about the SOS Brigade or the SOS Detective Agency. Or both.

But I was perceptive enough to realize it didn't matter. That glint in Haruhi's eye – she believed what she was saying. This wasn't a girl who was bored with life. This was a girl who could see the potential for adventure in everything the SOS Brigade did, no matter how mundane. A girl who hadn't been bored enough to want to go to a different world since shutting down one of her own closed spaces over half a year ago.

So it wasn't boredom, and it wasn't me getting angry at her. Then what?

"Okay, I guess you can't," Haruhi said in response to my puzzled silence. "But come on, Kyon, you can hang in there just a bit longer, can't you? Something exciting will happen soon."

"Yeah? When?" Wrong thing to say when you're trying to make someone feel better about returning to the real world, I know, but this detective agency was already starting to feel both completely insane and completely boring at the same time.

Haruhi answered my question with a little smile and a shrug of one shoulder.

"Right," I said. "Now, look. Maybe you aren't bored, but I know there's -"

The intercom buzzed. Haruhi pushed the button and spoke into it. "Not now. We're discussing a morale crisis."

"B-but," Miss Asahina's voice answered. "...there's a lady here to see you and Mr. Hayes. I think she's a client."

"A client?" I leapt on the intercom button. "If she tries to leave, shoot her!"

Haruhi raised an eyebrow at me. I looked away. _That was a Hayes maneuver, all right? I'm not being entertained by your nutty detective show._

_ Damn it, why didn't I tell Miss Asahina to have the client come back in an hour? I was about to start making some headway on figuring out why Haruhi brought us here! ...Well, maybe. It was the best shot I've had so far, at least. Another client is the last thing I need to see right now._

Then the client walked in, and I immediately retracted that last statement.

She wore a long black dress with a cloth belt, a large bow worn at the neck, and a purse, all three in the same shade of light purple. The skirt was short enough to show she had a decent pair of legs, and the impression of a pair of breasts that would give Miss Asahina a run for her money was visible, but neither of those were what grabbed my interest. It wasn't even the eerie black mask which covered her entire face except the eyes, which were themselves partially obscured by her veil. The mask wasn't the usual sort that fits over the face, but a smooth bowl-shaped one which hid even the contours of her face. The whole ensemble, combined with her solemn, mysterious poise, was like something out of a Hitchcock film (an analogy I have no business making, since the closest I've come to seeing a Hitchcock film is a photo in a history textbook, but work with me). Anyway, it wasn't a simmering interest in Hitchcock which made me excited to see her, either.

It was her eyes. Smooth, calm quicksilver.

I'd know those eyes anywhere. They were Nagato's. Haruhi had finally given her a part in the production.

"Good morning." Nagato's voice was strangely raspy and breathy, like she had the world's sorest throat; if I hadn't been already tipped off by those eyes, I probably wouldn't have recognized it. "My name is Barbara Wylie."

I wanted to run over, grab her by the shoulders, and ask her where she'd been. Maybe mention that I'd been worried about her while I was at it. But I hadn't yet forgotten Koizumi's warning about breaking character. Better to let this scene just play out, then confront Nagato in private once she stepped out of the office.

"Hello, I'm Kyon Hayes," I introduced myself, offering her my hand. This was for Haruhi's benefit; there was no way that Nagato, who remembered several thousand iterations of the same summer vacation, could have forgotten who I was.

She shook my hand. "Yes. I recognize you."

"Oh?" That was a surprise. I had expected her to play along with Haruhi's masquerade. "Did you see Koizumi on your way in?"

"Koizumi? I do not know who that is." Nagato was as bad an actress as ever. Her words indicated confusion, but her voice was as monotone as always, even with the strange rasp, and her eyes didn't even flicker. The familiarity was a welcome relief. "I did not mean that I know you personally. I recognize you from your ads."

_Oh, right. My modeling career. Crap. After wasting my conversation with Haruhi by thinking like Hayes when I should have been thinking like myself, now I'm thinking like myself when I should be thinking like Hayes. I wonder if Koizumi is having as much trouble keeping himself and his character straight?_

"Haruhi Addison," our brigade chief said, shaking her hand in turn.

I gestured to the couch. "Please, sit down."

"Thank you." She did as I suggested, while I took the chair opposite her. "I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. Hired a detective agency."

"Well," Haruhi grinned and folded her arms, obviously glad to have another case. "There's nothing to it."

_Hopefully she doesn't actually mean _nothing_. If there's no form of payment involved, I'm going to be very unhappy._

"You're wondering about the way I look," Nagato continued. For a split second I thought she was talking about the fact that long, curly blond locks of hair were spilling out of the back of the mask instead of her normal short black crop. "About the veil."

_Kind of, yeah... I'm sure it's just a part of your character, but even for a fictional piece of attire, it is intriguing._

Nagato paused a moment, then proceeded: "About twelve years ago, a boy, consumed with jealousy over the knowledge I was to marry someone else, threw acid in my face."

"Oh my god," I whispered.

"My skin... my throat... both were burned beyond repair. The man who assaulted me went to prison. My fiance, though so much hurt and shocked, did what he believed was the right thing. It wasn't what you would call a festive wedding. It hasn't been what you would call a festive marriage."

_Can we cut this scene right now and have a chat with the director about what's going on with this production? Is Nagato wearing actor's makeup, or is her face completely normal and we can just imagine it being horribly burned because she never takes off that mask? Because even though I know you'd never do something like this, Haruhi, I can't help but have a cold feeling at the pit of my stomach when I think about Nagato's face really __getting__ disfigured for the sake of your little show._

"Now hold on a second, Mrs. Wylie," Haruhi spoke up. "You say he threw acid in your face? Where did he get this acid from?"

Nagato was silent.

"No answer, huh?" A smug smile formed on Haruhi's face. "I thought so."

I put a hand over my face in embarrassment. _Honestly, Haruhi. If she knew how he got the acid, do you really think she would have let him get near enough to throw it in her face?_

"You know what I think? I think he didn't throw it in your face at all. I think he's an alien disguised as a human, and he _spit_ the acid in your face!"

Now I had both hands over my face, and that still wasn't enough to cover my embarrassment. "You'll have to excuse my associate, Mrs. Wylie. She -"

"She's right," Nagato stated. "That is exactly what happened."

_...Of course she's right. She's always right. This is her world, so anything Haruhi thinks is true automatically becomes true. Which I guess is true in the real world, too, except that in the real world even Haruhi has too much sense to think that an alien spitting acid in someone's face is likely. This dimension is a kind of fantasy world, and to her that means anything goes, no matter how illogical. I'd better be careful what sort of ideas I suggest around her._

"You should have said so in the first place," Haruhi said. "We're offering a 20% discount if your case involves an alien."

Nagato continued, "I want you to find the man who attacked me. His name is Frank Harbert. He was recently paroled."

I just wanted to get this scene over with so that I could talk to Nagato. "Sure, we can do that. Our fee is -"

"I'm sure what Mr. Hayes _meant_ to say," Haruhi interrupted, shooting me a glare. "...is that while we sympathize with what you've gone through, he has moral reservations about helping someone get revenge."

"I don't want revenge," Nagato said, and lowered her eyes. "I want him."

_O__hh__...kayyyyyy... Who wrote this crap, again?_

"If he'll still have me, I'll get a divorce. I've always loved him."

_I feel sick. I know these sorts of twisted relationships happen in real life, but do we have to watch them on TV, much less play them out?_

"I'll pay you $5,000 to find him for me. Please. And be discrete." She handed me a photo of a young woman. Her hair looked a lot like the wig or whatever that Nagato had on, so I guessed it was supposed to be her character, Barbara Wylie. "In case he needs proof."

She got up and left. I watched for some sign from her, some indication that she knew who she really was, but there was nothing.

Haruhi pushed the intercom. "Miss Asahina, get me the parole board."

"Right away!" she answered.

I got up from my chair. "Okay, while you're doing that, I just thought of a question I need to ask Mrs. Wylie."

"Huh?" Haruhi gaped at me. "So you're okay with us taking this case?"

"Yeah, sure. Be back in a few." I went out the door.

Or tried to. The knob wouldn't turn, no matter how hard I twisted and jiggled it. I tried simply pulling on it, but the bolt held the door firmly in place.

_Huh? This door isn't designed to lock people into the office, only out of it._

On instinct, I turned around. Her hands clenching the edges of her desk, muscles rigid, Haruhi was glaring at me with eyes that burned hellfire and brimstone. Behind her, the brick and mortar of the wall had collapsed to expose a cityscape shrouded over with thick, ominous storm clouds. Her voice was the sound of thunder. "I said, _**so you're okay with us taking this case?**_"

For a moment I just looked at her, my mouth open.

Then I hung my head and sighed. Haruhi playing at wrathful goddess was pretty cute, actually. We both knew that she would never seriously hurt anyone, least of all a brigade member, and she was still doing it with such earnestness, such sincere rage. But the fact remained that she had the power to keep me from leaving this office and going after Nagato, so any sentiment I might feel at her adorable wrath was far outweighed by frustration at having to give her what she wanted.

"No," I said, in the tone of a child apologizing under the parental threat of grounding. "No, actually, I'm totally against it. We can't in good conscience help that poor woman get together with the man who disfigured her and ruined her marriage."

"Now hold it right there," she objected, as if what I'd said wasn't just what she wanted me to say. Which it obviously was, because the wall behind her had reformed, good as new, and while her eyes still glared at me, within them was now an eager gleam. "Are we here to judge the motives of our client? No! Ours is not to reason why. Do lawyers not defend people they know are guilty as sin? Do doctors not treat patients they know are going to die? Do teachers not teach students they know are dumb as stumps?"

"We're not taking this case!" I exploded. I'd like to say this loss of temper was all Hayes, but that last rhetorical question was obviously a crack at me, and I really didn't appreciate it. There was no call for her to mock me just because I don't get as good grades as she does.

"Oh, no?"

"Yeah, no!"

"Kyon, you're not listening to me."

"I've listened. And as usual, you're thinking of nothing and no one but yourself!"

"That's not true. I feel an obligation to do what's best for this agency."

"Meaning what's best for your paychecks. What about other human beings?"

"They don't pay my rent," she snapped, and headed for the door. "I'm going to the parole board!"

_Damn it, no. We finally found Nagato. We are NOT playing another round of where's our brigade chief!_ "You're not going anywhere, Haruhi!"

Don't take that last remark too literally. Naturally the same door which wouldn't budge a minute ago opened right up for her. It knew better than to stand in the way of Haruhi Suzumiya.

"My conscience calls me!"

I hurried after her into the reception area. "It's probably wondering why you never call or write!" _Wait, why am I still arguing? The case doesn't mean anything to me, and the more I yell at her, the more likely she's going to walk out again! She might just insist I stick to the script again, but it's worth a shot to -_

I noticed the silence.

Haruhi did, too. She stopped at Miss Asahina's desk, took a look around the room – completely unoccupied apart from me, Miss Asahina, and herself – and said, "Ms. Asahina, where is everyone?"

"Lunch."

"It's not even 10:15," I pointed out. Koizumi had probably taken off after Nagato, and there was a decent chance that the others were in some way helping with that. He must have asked Miss Asahina to cover for them so that Haruhi wouldn't realize he was breaking character, but damn it, he should have used a more plausible cover story than _that._ Even Haruhi is going to realize he's up to something, unless Miss Asahina comes up with a better story.

"Um, o-okay then. Brunch?" Miss Asahina tried.

_Better not press her any further._

"You know..." Haruhi was tapping her jaw in a phony display of pondering. "Your employees would probably be less prone to wandering off during work hours if we put this company to work."

_Huh. Who'd have thought goofing off would make a good cover story?_

Haruhi looked me in the eyes in a manner much more serious than I was used to from Addison. In fact, I again got the feeling that I was dealing with the same Haruhi who sat behind me in class. Except that she looked totally reasonable. "Look, all we have to do is find this guy Frank Harbert. Just find him. If after we meet him you don't want to turn his address over to Barbara Wylie, then fine. We turn down the fee, no arguments."

I gave her a look that let her know that I knew her better than that, then proceeded to fix my gaze into the empty terrain of the agency's cubicles. The serious look on Haruhi's face was just a little too much for me right now. "What's the catch?"

"No catch. Look, you're the boss."

_Somehow, that sounds even more wrong when you say it than it did when I said it._

"I work for you. You want this agency to have no income, fine with me. You want to sleep on benches with newspapers for blankets? I'll give you all the magazine sections."

_Yeah, right. If we ever ended up sleeping on benches, you'd commandeer my jacket as your blanket, my lap as your pillow, and the newspapers as your bedtime reading, and complain that my shivering is keeping you awake._

"Hey," she grabbed hold of my tie and yanked me so that I was face-to-face with her. She smiled – not her usual blindly confident smile that said _Give me what I want or you'll be sorry_, but a gesture of warm reassurance. "Listen to me. We're a team. Partners. Now, forever. I mean that."

_Partners? As in equals?_

I couldn't dismiss this as just something that was in the episode's script. I mean, maybe it was in the script, but Haruhi had still chosen to run it. At some level, she was actually saying this to me. And she said "Now, forever" - maybe this was her way of offering me the choice of staying here in in this dimension forever. If I had any opportunity to convince Haruhi to let this thing end, this was it.

"You really know how to shovel it," I said.

...Okay, not exactly politic. But I couldn't help it. After tormenting Miss Asahina for no good reason, refusing to apologize for it, hanging up on me in the middle of an important conversation, and dragging the lot of us into a fantasy world so she doesn't have to face the consequences of her actions, she has the nerve to call us "partners"? Yeah, Haruhi, I'm pretty sure partners give each other equal say in decisions that affect both of them.

"Huh?" Haruhi was giving me a mildly perplexed look. Like she'd been expecting me to say something else and wasn't sure how to respond.

Meanwhile, I still needed to get away from her so that I could catch up with Nagato and Koizumi. "Okay, look. You call the parole board, and I'll see if I can find some of our prodigal employees."

"What do we need them for? The two of us can handle this ourselves, no problem."

"You said you wanted to put this company to work, didn't you? Or would you rather have them wrecking the office with meaningless fist fights?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You're trying to get rid of me, aren't you?"

"What would make you think that?" _Seriously. Damn mind reader._

"Ugh, fine. Go do whatever it is you really want to do off on your own. But you'd better meet me back here in 20 minutes, or it's the death penalty!"

_ Is she dropping the "Haruhi Addison" persona entirely, or __no__t?_

_ Better leave that question for later. This is my chance to talk to Nagato, assuming Koizumi stopped her from leaving the building._

I went out into the hall and looked around. There was Koizumi, but no Nagato.

"Hello." He smiled and waved his hand. "The script called for me to go and goof off with the others, but I thought you might like some help with the new case. I was listening in on your conversation with Miss Suzumiya, and -"

"I don't care about that right now. Where's Nagato?"

"Whatever makes you think I know that?"

_You have to be kidding me._ "You just let her walk out of here without even finding out where she was going?"

He looked back and forth between me and the agency door. "When did she walk out of here?"

"Like five minutes ago! The lady in the mask!"

"That was Nagato?"

I put a hand to my face. "You didn't even _recognize her?!"_

"How could I? She was wearing a mask and had blond hair. The voice didn't sound like her, either. Are you sure it was her?"

"Yes! Come on!" I grabbed his arm and pulled him along. We'd wasted enough time already.

"You do realize that there is almost undoubtedly an expanse of nonexistence standing between us and Miss Nagato?"

"Well, we can't just -"

I stopped mid-sentence as we came around the corner. Because there, just a little ways down the hall, stood Nagato. She had lifted her mask up to allow herself a drink from the water cooler (funny, I could have sworn there wasn't any water cooler in this hall), so I could see that her face wasn't scarred at all, to my relief.

"Nagato." I felt like I could scarcely contain my elation. "You waited for us."

She faintly inclined her head in affirmation, then put the paper cup under the water cooler's nozzle to refill it. With the cup no longer obscuring the center of her face I froze, startled.

_Why is she wearing a -_

No, there were more important questions I needed to ask. "Do you know where we are?"

"A spatial and temporally distinct locus, created by Haruhi Suzumiya to be a simulation of the television serial _Moonlighting_, with the members of the SOS Brigade inserted into the roles of specific characters."

"Do you know why she did that?"

"No." She lifted the refilled cup to her mouth.

"Okay... Then, is there any way we can -"

"Excuse me," Koizumi interrupted. "I have a more immediate question. Miss Nagato, why do you have a mustache?"

_...Don't we have more important things to talk about?_

Admittedly, Nagato didn't look at all offended. She took her time finishing her drink of water, then answered, "Because I am a man."


	8. The Betrayal

\- Chapter 8: The Betrayal -

Try to understand. My mind was exploding into a million fragments at that moment. I mean, if it were any other girl who had said to me "I am a man," I would have either calmly asked them what exactly they meant by that or made some remark about their poor sense of humor. But when Nagato said it, the only possible explanation was that it was the literal truth.

Meanwhile Koizumi, exhibiting that same insufferable calmness he'd shown when the elevator doors opened up to a floor of nothing, held a hand towards Nagato's mouth and said, "May I?" She nodded, and he gently pulled on the hairs of her mustache. He looked to me. "It's real."

So, again. There I was, confronted with the revelation that a girl I was good friends with had become a man. A man with a mustache. That's something you don't expect to happen to you in your lifetime. That's the sort of thing that's so innately repulsive that you don't even have nightmares about it, because your subconscious doesn't want to think about it. Yeah, the same subconscious that makes you dream about accidentally eating a fish bone that then pierces completely through your cheek. It's the sort of thing that makes it hard to think straight.

So please. Try not to judge me too harshly because the next words out of my mouth were: "But you have _breasts!_"

Koizumi winced.

"No," Nagato replied. "Brassiere stuffed with tissue paper."

I guess that explained why they were so much bigger.

"I think I understand," Koizumi said. "Miss Suzumiya has cast you in the role of a male character who is impersonating Barbara Wylie. Which would probably make you the villain of this episode. Correct?"

She again filled her paper cup from the water cooler, without answering.

"Hold it." My voice was a lot louder than usual, but I couldn't help it. "Hold on. Just, just hold it." _There's no way, just absolutely no way. Haruhi wouldn't do something so unbelievably sick and wrong._ "Are you telling me that Haruhi actually changed your gender?! Even, even your..."

"No."

Sigh of relief. My brain has been saved from the need to commit suicide.

"I did. Since I am playing a man, I altered my information so I could accurately perform the role."

And now my brain is back to preparing its noose.

Koizumi put a hand to his chin. "I think you're going rather too far just to play a part. I'm sure Miss Suzumiya wouldn't mind if you just wore the costumes and read the lines, as you did for our movie."

Nagato finished her latest cup of water before responding. "It is no trouble. In fact, I am learning a great deal. I look forward to experiencing urination from a standing position." She (or rather, he) began filling his cup with water yet again, and I now realized what his purpose in hydrating himself was.

_Arrrrrrgggghhhh. Cannot... unsee..._

"Where do you intend to defecate? Logically, there should be a bathroom around here, but because this is just a TV show, the only bathrooms in this building seem to be Hayes and Addison's private bathrooms."

"There is not yet data on what happens when matter enters the voids of nonexistence which lie between the different areas of this locus."

"Ah? So then, through the doors of the elevator when it reaches the lobby?"

"Yes."

"Most interesting. Let me know what happens."

_And now Koizumi is engaged in male bonding with Nagato. This is a contender for the worst day of my life._

I snatched the paper cup from Nagato before she (_Yeah, she, __dammit__, I'm not going to change Nagato's pronouns!_) could fill it again. "Just stop it, okay? What is it with everyone, wanting to be someone else? Haruhi wants to be a private detective, Koizumi wants to be Miss Asahina's fictional boyfriend, and now you want to be a man! Can't you all see that you're fine just the way you are in the real world?"

Nagato looked at me. "Do not worry. I am aware of the taboo against changing one's gender. If I return to our default reality, I will restore my female status at that time."

"What do you mean, 'if'? You think Haruhi is going to keep us here forever?"

"Only me."

_Damn it. Every answer just spawns a lot more questions._ "What's so special about you?"

Nagato went silent.

Koizumi leaned closer to her face. "Miss Nagato, if you are saying that there is the chance that we will lose you in this realm, I think we both must insist that you explain the situation. We must be given the opportunity to prevent that from happening."

She considered a moment. "...This simulation is not an exact recreation of _Moonlighting_. In some cases due to Haruhi Suzumiya's personal wishes, in some cases due to her imperfect memory of the episodes, and in some cases due to our deviations from her intent, there are numerous differences between what we are experiencing and the original show. Dialogue has been changed. The genders of the male and female leads have been switched. Koizumi is here in the role of Herbert Viola, who was not added to the cast until season three, despite the scene we played out moments ago being from season two. Scenes from one episode have been mixed in with or even spliced with scenes from other episodes. Entirely new scenes have been created.

"Nonetheless... Recent events bear a strong similarity to the beginning of the second episode broadcast during _Moonlighting_'s second season, titled 'The Lady in the Iron Mask'."

"And the villain, played by you, dies at the end of the episode?" Koizumi guessed.

"Even if he does not, Haruhi Suzumiya may change that if she wishes."

"No way," I said. "Even if she isn't conscious of it, part of Haruhi has to realize who we all really are. She wouldn't make you die. She wouldn't make _anyone_ die."

Koizumi shook his head. "Forgive me, but we can't make that assumption while Miss Nagato's life is on the line."

"What's with you?" _Finally, a golden opportunity to pay him back for all his teasing._ "Are you in love with Nagato now?"

"It's a matter of motive. You remember how Miss Suzumiya saw Miss Nagato push you down the stairs, reflecting her intuitive understanding that Nagato was the one responsible for your ensuing coma?"

I thought a moment. "You're saying Haruhi might want to kill Nagato to get back at her for putting me in that coma? That's ridiculous."

"She stayed by your side for three days while you were in that coma."

"So what? That's when she thought I might not come out of it. I did come out of it, so the fact that I was in a coma doesn't even matter to her now. That's just the way Haruhi thinks."

Nagato finally spoke again. "There is another reason Haruhi Suzumiya may not allow me to return."

We waited. Nagato blinked.

"Um... Nagato... When you say something like that, you're supposed to tell us what you're talking about."

She nodded. "It is difficult to speak of. Haruhi Suzumiya entrusted her power to me, and I used it in a manner contrary to her desires."

_...What?_

"You're referring to the incident of this past December, correct?" Koizumi prodded. "But Kyon told us that you took Miss Suzumiya's power against her will."

"He misunderstood, and what you describe is not possible. Even theoretically, Suzumiya's power can only be acquired through her procreation, death, or willing transference."

_Right... I guess that explains why rogue interfaces like Ryoko Asakura never took Haruhi's power. __I don't know what procreation means, but __Haruhi would never give __her power__ to them willingly, and killing her would be too risky. _"But why would Haruhi give her power to you? How could she, anyway, when she doesn't even know she has it?"

"I interfaced with her in her unconscious state. She asked me to use her power to change something about herself. She cannot do this herself, since her power is resistant to its own effects."

"What exactly did she want you to change?"

"That is her secret."

_Crazy__. Ha__ruhi, want__ing__ to change something about herself? It's usually everyone else who she thinks should change. _"Why are you only telling us this now, anyway? Why didn't you say something when you first told me you were the one who'd changed the universe?"

"I was confident that the Data Integration Thought Entity would remove me from my assignment. I wished your thoughts of me to be as kind as possible after I was gone."

I forced a smile. "Why would that make our thoughts of you less kind?"

"Because Haruhi Suzumiya trusted me to help her, and I instead altered the universe to one where she was bored, unhappy, and alone." She said this in her usual monotone, save for the masculine huskiness, but her eyes lowered.

"Indeed," Koizumi commented. "Which prompts me to ask, why are you telling this to me, specifically, and not just Kyon? Do you not think that I, knowing you are so untrustworthy, might advise my associates to remove you from the field?"

"Koizumi!" I objected.

"If so, I welcome your efforts," Nagato answered him. "I do not wish to be any further threat to Haruhi Suzumiya or her friends."

"Damn it, you're not a threat! You're the one who set up the escape program that let me fix the universe in the first place! You gave me the choice to accept or reject that reality!"

"Not consciously. The emergency escape program is part of a fail-safe routine incorporated into the base information of all humanoid interfaces, in case of Haruhi Suzumiya drastically altering the universe. In the same way that a human with a genetic disease would not be aware of it until symptoms begin to manifest, I was not aware of the fail-safe routine until I had used Suzumiya's power to change the universe."

_No. No, no, no._ "I don't believe you."

"You are allowing emotion to cloud your judgment."

"Like hell! Even if you didn't know about the escape program, the only reason it worked was because you let me keep my original memories!"

"That was not my choice either. When Haruhi Suzumiya attempted to recreate the universe eight months ago, she enclosed you in an Anti-Data Reconfiguration Screen. Contrary to what I assumed, she never allowed this screen to lapse."

"Now you're just making things up as you go along!"

"If I may intercede," Koizumi said. "I think we're getting too excited over this. Miss Nagato, my question was purely an academic one. Even if my organization could eliminate you without the risk of the Data Integration Thought Entity interpreting it as an act of aggression, we would then have to deal with your replacement, and..." He smiled at her. "...I much prefer the devil I know over any of those which I don't. So let us return to the matter at hand. Can you still communicate with the Data Integration Thought Entity?"

"Yes. That is how I accessed the information about _Moonlighting_."

"Then, can the Entity extract us from this world back into the normal reality?"

"Transmitting." She looked away from us for a moment, then looked back to me instead of Koizumi. "It is possible to return you, Itsuki Koizumi, and Mikuru Asahina to the default reality. However, Haruhi Suzumiya cannot be taken from this locus unless she wishes it."

"I thought not." Koizumi didn't seem bothered that Nagato was apparently ignoring him. "Since we do not appear to be in any immediate danger, I suggest we remain here and continue trying to convince Miss Suzumiya to return."

I nodded my agreement.

"However, you, Miss Nagato, are a different story. Since Miss Suzumiya has reason to wish you ill, and has placed you in a role which suggests that she has scripted a poetically just demise for you, it is too risky for you to remain here. Quickly brief us on anything we might need to know about _Moonlighting_, then have your Entity extract you."

I nodded in agreement again. I didn't like looking like Koizumi's yes-man, but I was at least as concerned about Nagato as he was.

"No," Nagato said.

_Huh?_

"I will not leave until my part in Haruhi Suzumiya's script has been fulfilled."

Koizumi looked perturbed. "Even if that means your death?"

She nodded.

"Why, Nagato?" I burst out. "Just because you feel guilty over what you did back in December?"

"No."

"Then, why?"

"My reasons cannot be translated to human concepts or language." Her voice somehow seemed more distant than ever. Maybe it was the masculine tone, messing with my head. "I wish to receive Haruhi Suzumiya's judgment. That is the only explanation I can give you."

Something about the way she said that... made me feel like I could almost grasp what her reasons were. But I didn't care. "Nagato, you're our friend. If you won't get yourself to safety for your own sake, can't you do it for our sake?"

"Your friendship is very important to me." Nagato let fall a pause that I'm sure was meant to emphasize that she meant that. Nagato never hesitates. "But this is even more important."

I was trying to come up with another argument, but Koizumi spoke up first. "Then, will you oppose our own, independent efforts at assuring your safety?"

"...No. You may do as you wish."

"But..." I tried, hoping that my brain would promptly come up with something to follow that word.

"We're running out of time before you need to meet with Miss Suzumiya, so let's not waste that time with arguing," Koizumi reasoned. "We've already resolved to convince Miss Suzumiya to end this simulation early, and if we succeed in that then no harm will come to Miss Nagato regardless."

I hated to admit it, but he had a point.

"We need more information than the spur-of-the-moment impulses we get from Miss Suzumiya's 'script'. Miss Nagato, can you tell us about the characters we're playing?"

Nagato again looked at me while answering Koizumi's question. "Haruhi Suzumiya has taken on the role of David Addison, who originally ran this agency. He is a jokester, a devout Christian, and a party lover. He provides the cynical, worldly viewpoint to counter the idealistic moralism of his boss, Madeline Hayes."

I nodded. "Which would be me."

"Hmm." Koizumi had a hand to his jaw. "Perhaps I am mistaken, but isn't Madeline exclusively a female name?"

"That is not a contradiction," Nagato said. "Madeline Hayes is female."

_Today is not a good day for gender revelations._ "Haruhi cast me as a woman?!"

"No. The role of Hayes has been changed to a man, just as the role of Addison has been changed to a woman. I am the only individual who Miss Suzumiya has cast in a role contrary to their default gender."

_That does not make me feel a whole lot better._

"Hayes was a highly successful model who took on a partnership in the agency after she and Addison had an adventure together which she found surprisingly enjoyable. Hayes and Addison are the starring characters, with the show focusing on the mysteries confronted by the agency and..."

I wearily rubbed the side of my face. "Look, I don't think this is really helpful. Why don't you just tell us what happens in this episode?"

Nagato paused while I was speaking, then finished, "...the romantic tension between Hayes and Addison."

"Huh? There isn't any romantic tension between us. We're just business associates." _Wait... Is Nagato making a joke?_

Koizumi's usual smile was back in full force. "Hmm... Romantic tension between an adventure-seeking pair who insist they are just 'business associates'? I think I begin to see why Miss Su-"

"Shut up."

"There's nothing for you to be embarrassed about. It is Miss Suzumiya who chose these roles for the two of you."

"I said shut up. This is no basis for psychoanalyzing Haruhi. For all you know, she just picked this show because she wanted some mysteries to solve."

"I don't think so. She is scripting these events, and what fun is a mystery when you already know the solution?"

_We don't have time for this. _"Just tell us what happens in this episode, Nagato."

"No."

"What?"

"No spoilers."

Koizumi and I looked at each other in bewilderment. "...You're joking, right?"

"No spoilers," she insisted.

_Is the whole brigade contracting Haruhi's insanity?_ "Look, Nagato, the whatever entity already told you what happens, right? And Haruhi obviously knows. So what's two more people knowing?"

"The Data Integration Thought Entity attempted to transmit that information to me, but I refused it. No spoilers."

_This cannot be real. A person who doesn't want any hints on whether they're going to die in the next few days because of "spoilers"? Nagato, you're taking your love for a good story too far._

"I suppose it's just as well," Koizumi shrugged. "Miss Suzumiya can change the episode's script however she sees fit. We'd best be prepared for anything."

_Great. So our plan is "Wing it." We're really starting to take after our brigade leader._

"Go ahead and meet with Miss Suzumiya to find this Frank Harbert. Take the opportunity to try to brighten her mood; the happier she is, the less likely she is to wish for anyone's death. Miss Asahina and I will hold up the fort here."

"Aren't you coming with us?" I didn't enjoy Koizumi's company, but he could be helpful in persuading Haruhi. And I didn't relish the thought of leaving him alone with Miss Asahina.

"There's no logical reason for Herbert Koizumi to do so, and more importantly, it's not in the script. Miss Suzumiya wishes to be alone with you."

_That's another thing I hate about Koizumi's constant smile. You can never tell if he's being suggestive on purpose._


	9. Car Scenes

\- Chapter 9: Car Scenes -

You think you've had boring car rides? Picture this: A realm where the creator has only bothered to design a few hundred feet of landscape, and when you've traveled those few hundred feet it just cycles through that same landscape, over and over. Like playing a racing video game where each lap is just a few seconds long. And don't even bother asking "How much farther is it?", because you'll get there when the plot says you do, and no sooner. A journey of two or three miles could take a half hour if the dialogue between driver and passenger requires that much time.

And to top it off, the driver is the same girl you sit in front of in class and have after-school extracurricular activities with. Yeah, if you were not on that trip to find Frank Harbert, you do not know how boring a car ride can be.

"So," Haruhi broke the silence.

"So." I knew I should be saying something to get us out of this dangerous realm, but I couldn't think of anything.

"You seemed pretty vehement about us not taking this case. Is there a story there?"

_Good grief. You're pulling that line on me after you practically forced me to object to taking the case?_ "No story."

"Come on. Something about Barbara Wylie's story got to you, maybe reminded you of one of your old dates." When I remained silent, she cocked an eyebrow. "You must have had some romance in your life before you met me."

"Nope. Never had a date, never been in love." Actually, Hayes had had a couple of interesting love affairs which, thanks to Haruhi, were now lodged inside my head. But I wasn't in the mood to play her stupid role.

"A classy hunk like you? I find that just a little hard to believe." Ordinarily, if Haruhi had said those words to me they'd be dripping with caustic sarcasm. In her role as Addison, they were instead playful but essentially in earnest. I'm not sure which one was worse. "Well, you know how this works. We get a case, we discuss subject matter related to the case on the drive over. So if you won't talk about one of your romances, I'll have to talk to you about one of mine."

My mind was going numb from the endlessly cycling yellowed earth, sagebrush, and cacti, so without thinking I replied, "Have you had any? I thought you broke up with all of your boyfriends within a week."

"So?" She gave me that look that seemed to say that I focused way too much on things that don't matter. "A romance is a romance. Doesn't matter how long it lasts."

_Wait a second. We both just acknowledged her real past, and she didn't bat an eye. Come to think of it, didn't Koizumi say that as long as I'm not actively thinking about it, I'll channel Hayes automatically? So how did I blurt that out anyway? Am I breaking out of whatever it is Haruhi's doing to make us play our roles? Or is Haruhi putting aside the script?_

"Anyway, for our first date, this guy asks me out to a big family get-together. Bad sign right away, you know?"

"I guess. What's so bad about that?"

"It means one or more of four things. He's so scared of girls that he can't stand to be alone with one, even on a date, he's too cheap to pay for usual date activities, he's planning to pressure you to stay in the relationship by integrating you into his family, or he's not interested in dating at all, he just needs a girl to show to his parents to keep them from suspecting he's gay or something."

I supposed those were all reasonable suspicions if the family gathering was the guy's pick for a first date. And they would be valid complaints if the guy were an adult, or in high school even. But Haruhi was talking about a guy she went out with in middle school. At that age, was it really so atypical to be nervous about dating, or unable to pay for dinner and a movie? Oh wait, here I am expecting Haruhi to be reasonable. Silly me.

"Anyway, when we got there, he introduced me to his uncle, who right away went into this long tirade about -"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, recognizing that someone was beginning a long tirade herself. "This sounds like an interesting story, but could we talk about what you were doing to Miss Asahina at the last brigade meeting?"

She looked away from the road to give me raised eyebrows. "What are you talking about? Brigade meeting?"

_...Of course. She remembers her middle school dating from the real world, so you'd think she'd remember our big argument of less than a week ago. I should know better than to expect consistency from Haruhi. So long as she doesn't want to talk about it, it never happened in this world._

"Fine," I said, looking away from her, back to the repetitive scenery outside the window. "Be that way."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, if you don't want to hear about my romances, you have to tell me about one of yours."

"I told you, there's nothing to tell. I've never dated anyone but you, and you already know how that worked out."

"Look, the guy who sold me the tickets didn't tell me that they weren't together."

_I was actually talking about _our_ dates, not Hayes and Addison's. I guess you don't want to talk about those, either._ "If you say so. The point is, my dating experience has nothing to do with not wanting to take this case." Inspiration struck me. "It was hearing Wylie's story and thinking about how horrible what Harbert did to her was. It makes me angry. Hasn't someone ever done something to you that made you really angry? So angry that you want to make them pay for what they did?"

She went silent. I started to wonder if trying to get her to talk about what Nagato did to her wasn't the best idea. Actually, it was probably the worst possible idea. I should have tried talking about all the good things Nagato had done for her.

I glanced over. Her eyes were focused on the road, but at last she said, "Usually I don't give them the chance."

"How do you do that?"

"It's not complicated. You just have to be stronger and smarter than your enemies. Then all you have to worry about is your friends, the ones you're really close to, you know? And I haven't been really close to anyone in a long while. Well, not until I met you."

_Well, we've taken the conversation this far. May as well keep prodding the big bear._ "You said 'usually', and 'until I met you'. So you were hurt by someone close to you recently?"

She scowled. "What are you getting at?"

"That's what I'm asking you."

"You're saying that I was hurt by something you did recently?"

_...Wait, that's not what I -_

But Haruhi didn't allow me time to even finish that thought, much less open my mouth. "Well, maybe you're right! You may have a pretty face, but you can be a real handful, you know that? And when I'm bending over backwards to try to satisfy your demands, it would be nice if you showed a little appreciation now and then!"

"...You just said that whole thing backwards."

"What?"

"You're the one with the pretty face and the high demands. My face looks stupid. You said so yourself, remember?"

"No I didn't."

_No, of course not. Any real world events didn't happen unless you want them to._

"That doesn't even make any sense. I mean, you're one of the most famous models in the country. And how could I be the one with high demands when _you're_ the boss? Don't think you've gotten out of telling me about your past romances, either. I'm going to find out, one way or another."

"Haruhi."

"What?"

"Do you remember Yuki Nagato at all?"

She gripped the steering wheel more tightly. "What, is she one of your old girlfriends?"

"No, she's one of your best friends, actually."

"I don't think so." She pursed her lips. "I would remember something like that."

* * *

And just like that, the scene was over, and we were pulling up to a rundown building little bigger than the cafe the SOS Brigade frequented, with a little white sign with black lettering that said "Santa Junta Mission".

"Now wait a minute," I said. "Nagato's done lots of nice things for you, like letting you use the literary clubroom for your club, and playing lead guitar for you when you filled in for ENOZ."

"Ugh, are you still on about that? I don't know any Nagato, and none of the stuff you're talking about happened. Now come on." She opened the car door and got out.

I did the same. "Okay, but suppose you did have a friend named Nagato, and she did something that made you really angry. Would you -"

"What _is_ your problem?" She was looking really annoyed now. "Here we are, at the last known address of an alien who spit acid in a woman's face out of jealousy, and _this_ is what you want to talk about? Why don't you, I don't know, have some sort of crisis of conscience and contemplate busting the door down and putting the fear of God into this Harbert guy?"

_That's the sort of thing you would do, not me._

"Or at least question that an alien ex-con would really be in a place like this! Honestly, why do you have to be so boring?"

"Why do _you_ always need to be entertained?" I retorted.

She turned away and headed towards the building, but I heard her mutter under her breath, "You're the one who always needs to be entertained."

Whatever that means.

In front there was a little indigenous girl with a log book, seated behind boxes labeled "$2 Admission" and "Restoration Fund". There was also a large sign to her left saying "Historic Lecture Every 15 Minutes". Haruhi strode past, giving barely a side glance as she said, "Pay the girl."

I dug into my wallet and handed over two dollar bills. It was going to be weird seeing yen again when we got back home.

We went inside and sat in one of the pews towards the back. A brown-haired man in a gray uniform was giving a lecture.

"...and the original structure, made of thousands of handmade adobe bricks, took two years to complete. The cross you see behind me on the wall measures eight feet. Legend has it the cross is constructed of wood taken from the flagship of..."

I zoned out right there. I listen to enough history lessons as a high school student; do I have to listen to them as a private detective, too? Real exciting case you picked for us, Haruhi.

At least it was over in short order. The lecturer released the visitors to look around, then headed down the side aisle towards the entrance.

"You Frank Harbert?" Haruhi called to him. It was a good show of private eye grammar, I'll admit, but the man kept walking. Haruhi got out of the pew. "You said feel free to ask any questions."

He turned to her. For an acid-spitting alien, he looked exceptionally normal, even average, but I guess the idea was that he was using a holographic disguise or something to blend in. "Who's asking?"

I approached him and handed over the photo of young Barbara Wylie that Nagato had given us.

Harbert looked away for a moment. "She's not dead or anything, is she?"

I shook my head.

He hefted the photo, as if it contained some heavy weight that he could barely lift. "I took this." He pointed. "I bought that ribbon for her hair."

_Ribbon?_ It suddenly struck me that since coming here, Haruhi had never worn any of her real world clothes. At the moment, she was wearing a formal skirt, collared shirt, and tie. If the weather weren't so hot, she'd probably have the trench coat on again. But she still had that yellow ribbon in her hair. Maybe, if and when we got back to the real world, it was time I asked her what the deal with that ribbon is.

Haruhi was less easily distracted than I was. "She was very pretty," she prompted.

"Yeah. She was." Harbert handed the photo back. "Anyway, I'm glad she's not dead."

"She wants to see you."

"What?!" He gawked at us. "She's married, wrong?"

Haruhi looked away from him. She muttered, "She said she'd be willing to undo that." I guess the idea of breaking up a marriage didn't sit well with her, either. It was refreshing when Haruhi showed some bit of normality.

"What is this, some kind of joke?!"

_I should try telling this guy we're visitors from another dimension. Love to see his reaction to that._ "I find it hard to believe myself, but Barbara Wylie -" I paused. "...or someone claiming to be her, came into our office, gave us this photo, and hired us to find you. She said she's always loved you."

A deep pain went over Harbert's face. "Did she tell you what I did to her?"

Haruhi was still looking away. Not angrily, but like something was happening that she couldn't bear to watch. But I nodded in response to Harbert's question.

"I heard she was getting married. So I... I found out where her bridal shower was." He spoke slowly, like every word pained him, like he was punishing himself by sharing this private shame with two strangers. "And I waited outside, in the bushes. She came out, and I... I walked up to her... and I said, 'I love you forever.' And I... I looked in her face..." The pain seemed to be tearing up Harbert's face now. "Her eyes... her mouth... and I thought, 'No, don't do this!'"

His head bowed. His eyes clenched shut.

He said in nearly a sob, "...But I did it anyway."

I couldn't help but keep my attention riveted on Harbert and his story, but I also noticed that Haruhi still had her face turned away. The situation reminded me of that night in my room when she told me she'd killed Mr. Everett. Why was she running these sorts of scenarios? How did this qualify as a mystery, anyway? We knew who did it and why right from the beginning. He'd even been brought to justice already. Our case was just a painful moral dilemma, not a mystery.

"Not a day goes by I don't see her face." Harbert's face clenched. "Not a night goes by I don't hear her screaming."

_Am I supposed to say something here, Haruhi? If so, I have no idea what. This whole thing is just as painful and uncomfortable for me as it is for you._

"She really... She really said she'd marry me?"

I nodded.

"Yeah... well..." He wiped the tears from his eyes. "Do her a favor: You never found me."

* * *

And we were back in the car. Haruhi was driving. I was looking out the window and pondering.

"Would you do that for someone?" I said.

"Do what?"

"Give up someone you're in love with, and would have a chance at being with, because they'll be happier without you?"

"I don't know. I guess it would depend on how exactly I felt about them. Not all relationships are equal, you know?"

"Well, for example… I guess you've never been in love with anyone. But there are people you're attached to. What about me?"

"What _about_ you?"

"Well, I'm important to you, right?"

"A little, I guess. Yeah."

_You camped out in my hospital room for three days. Why do you bother playing coy anymore?_ "So suppose I wanted to transfer to another sch- I mean, leave the SOS Detective Agency and move to a different city. What would you do?"

"You even have to ask? Obviously, I would find out who was forcing you to leave, and confront them!"

"You're not listening," I sighed. "The idea is that I'm leaving _willingly_. No one is forcing me."

"Abandoning your duty to the SOS Detective Agency? I'd have to come up with a massive penalty for that."

_This is not going like I'd hoped._ "Look, forget about the agency for a minute. I'm asking what you would do if I walked out of your life."

"_Are_ you thinking of leaving the SOS Detective Agency?"

"No, of course not." _Can't a guy ask a hypothetical question?_

"Hmm." She was silent for a minute. "Nope, can't allow that. Like I said earlier, we're partners, now and forever."

I gave her a dour look. "So I'm stuck with you forever, whether I like it or not?"

"Yup! Hey, that was a pretty good discussion on subject matter related to the current case! You're really getting into the spirit of this! Want to talk over each other again?"

"Not particularly."

"Okay then, want to hear about what talking to Harbert made _me_ think of?"

"Go ahead." _As if I could stop you._

"It made me think that it doesn't make a difference that Harbert's an alien. I mean, he has to look, act, and talk like a human in order to fit in, so on the surface, he's no different from a human. It doesn't really matter whether he spit acid in Barbara Wylie's face or mixed the acid up in a chemistry lab. And there wouldn't have been any point in us letting on that we know he's an alien, would there?"

"It would have just upset him for no reason."

"Right. For all the difference it made, he might as well have been human. That made me think... If it doesn't matter if Harbert's an alien, you could also say it doesn't matter if someone's a human. For instance, suppose Mr. Koizumi was an alien in disguise. It wouldn't change anything, would it? It wouldn't change the fact that he's been a good friend, and a loyal, hardworking employee of the SOS Detective Agency. He'd be exactly the same if he were human or alien."

I looked at her. That was a much deeper thought than you usually heard from Haruhi.

"So life can be a bit more exciting if you imagine that people you know are secretly aliens and other exciting sorts of people. I could imagine that Agnes is a time traveler, and I'd never be proven wrong, because of course she wouldn't admit to it, because that would jeopardize her secret mission to save the future! What do you think?"

"It's... an interesting idea." But a little terrifying, in the hands of a girl who can turn what she imagines into reality. "But maybe you shouldn't -"

"Well, you've got to try it out yourself! Do me. What do you think I am: Alien, esper, time traveler, or slider?"

"You're stranger than any of them."

I turned and looked out my window again. But the silence which followed my remark begin to strike me as odd after a moment or two. I glanced back at Haruhi, and saw she was wearing an incredibly self-satisfied smile.

"Hey," I protested. "I didn't mean that as a compliment."

"I know."

_Oh, right. Haruhi's not into flattery, so the fact that I didn't mean it as a compliment just makes it seem all the more sincere. Oh well, Koizumi did say it would reduce the danger to Nagato if I got Haruhi in a good mood._

"So," Haruhi said, straightening her mouth out. "What's the verdict, Judge Judy? Do we turn Harbert's address over to Wylie, or keep quiet about it?"

"I... don't know." _The hell? What happened to my script? This is obviously a key part of the episode, but I have no idea what Hayes is supposed to say here! I'm not consciously thinking about being myself, either._

Without taking her eyes off the road, Haruhi spoke in a voice that seemed to know exactly the conundrum I was facing: "It's your call."

_That's your game? Throw me another hypothetical question, and force me to answer it b__y__ tak__ing__ me to a world where the hypothetical is real?_

"Keep in mind, though," she continued, "if we don't tell her where he is, Wylie will just hire someone else. So whatever's going to happen between them, happens. It's just a matter of what part we play, and how much money we bring home."

Not exactly. I was still planning on us leaving this pocket dimension sooner rather than later, so all those American dollars were going to be left in the ether regardless. And the person we'd be giving the address to is actually Nagato in the role of a man impersonating Barbara Wylie, though if you know what that means, you're one step ahead of me. The question was, what would happen to Nagato if we didn't give her the address? Would Haruhi just let her go, drop her out of the story, free her from this little realm she'd created? Or would she shuffle her into another episode, one where we might not know what role she was in until too late? On the other hand, if I decided to give Nagato the address, would Haruhi interpret that as my approval to go ahead with a plot which ends up with Nagato dead?

Both courses had their potential dangers. At the same time, I wasn't ready to believe Haruhi would do any harm to Nagato. I'd doubted her during Koizumi's remote island mystery and had come to regret it. Of course, this was a very different situation since Haruhi had an actual grudge against the potential victim, but still, I'd rather presume her innocent until proven guilty. So maybe both courses were perfectly harmless.

It came down to one thing. "If something's going to happen, I'd rather we were as involved as possible."

Haruhi smiled. "You're a man after my own heart, partner."

"Don't call me that. Just pull over at the next gas station so I can call Barbara Wylie and give her the news."

"You got it, boss."

"Can't you call me by my actual name? Or, if you must, 'Kyon'?"

"Gas station up ahead just half a mile."

_Or maybe just call me the inaudible man._


	10. Training Wheels

\- Chapter 10: Training Wheels -

There was an upside to living in a world without mobile phones, it seemed. If we had mobile phones, I wouldn't have had an excuse to call "Wylie" in private. I would have had to just call her up from the car, with Haruhi beside me in the driver's seat. As it was, it was only natural to leave Haruhi in charge of filling the car with gas and buying sodas while I went to the payphone on the side of the station to the make the call.

I made a different call first, though. After one ring, a lovely, warbling female voice answered, "SOS Detective Agency.

_"Have your bosses and friends  
__left you to tend shop on your own?  
__I know where you've been, buddy  
__You're not all alone_

_Are they off on big adventures  
__while you're sweeping the halls?  
__Maybe next time you see them  
__you should kick them right -"_

"Miss Asahina!" I interrupted. "Miss Asahina, it's me."

"Oh! M-m-m-Mr. Hayes! Um, h-how is the search going?"

"Great. Listen, can you put Mr. Koizumi on the line?" I hated to brush her aside, especially given how she'd answered the phone, but I had things to run by Koizumi and it wouldn't take Haruhi long to fill the tank and get a couple drinks.

"Oh... Oh, of course it's him you'd want to talk to." She called for Koizumi. As I waited, I watched Haruhi. She was humming a tune while watching the numbers roll up on the gas pump.

"Good to hear from you, Mr. Hayes!" Koizumi's voice came on. "Have you two cracked the case yet?"

"Um, yeah." I reminded myself that he needed to remain in character in front of Miss Asahina. "But I've got something more important. Koizumi, I've been breaking character left and right this whole trip, and Haruhi hasn't even grumbled. In fact, she keeps breaking character herself. But she won't admit to remembering Nagato or what happened Monday. What's going on here?"

"Agnes, could you please go somewhere else for a moment? Mr. Hayes needs to discuss some highly sensitive client information with me."

I heard a soft murmur of submission. "That's another thing. You need to tell Miss Asahina what's going on. She's obviously not enjoying the secretary bit the way you said she was."

"She'll survive." Koizumi was talking more quietly now. "As for your question, two theories spring to mind. One, the way you found her at the end of the previous case has convinced her that it's alright to be herself, even if it hasn't convinced her to return to the real world."

"That can't be it. She was more insistent than ever that we stick to the script when Nagato was at the agency. It's only on this trip that she's been letting things slide."

"It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Sticking to the script while Nagato was here was probably necessary to establish a framework for the episode. Which brings me to my second theory. Perhaps Miss Suzumiya was planning to let us be ourselves all along, and the scripts and character bibles were merely a sort of training wheels."

"What does that mean?"

"Hmm. You like video games, don't you? Well, if you think of this pocket realm as a video game designed by Miss Suzumiya, then consider the Everett case to be the tutorial level. Things are on a linear, restrictive path. The game tells you to perform specific actions, and if you do not obey, then you cannot progress. As you reach later levels, the game opens up. More pathways and manifold possibilities are laid out for you. The game trusts that you have learned how to play it, and no longer gives directions. That is where we are now."

"I get it. If that's what's happening, is it a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Well, I'm tempted to think it's a good thing, since if Miss Suzumiya is not restricting us to a script, that makes it much less likely that she is engineering Miss Nagato's death. On the other hand, she can take the training wheels on or off at a moment's notice. I think we'd best keep our guard up. Has her mood improved?"

"Yeah, but I have no idea why. She was pretty irritable for most of the trip, but as soon as we started talking on the ride back, she got all bouncy and upbeat."

"Another thing you have in common with Miss Suzumiya is remarkable intuition. You always know what to say to make her feel better."

"I didn't say anything. I just asked a hypothetical question about me leaving the SOS Brigade. Shouldn't that have made her mood get _worse_, if anything?"

"I would have thought so, yes. This is why we rely upon you to clear away any storm clouds that form over Miss Suzumiya's head. You say the right thing even when you don't understand why it's the right thing."

_Uh huh. Or maybe something else changed her mood. Haruhi does care about things other than me, you know._

_ ...Oh wait. The only thing on this trip that wasn't just following Haruhi's script is me. Crap._ "Um, look Koizumi. I've got to call 'Wylie' and tell her we got Harbert's address, but we have to do something about the threat to Nagato. Haruhi may be happy now, but she's not letting us go back to the real world."

"I agree. Since Nagato is the villain of this episode, I believe we can learn more about the plot if I monitor her. However, I'll need orders from Mr. Hayes or Ms. Addison to do so."

"Right. I'll take responsibility."

"Also, something has occurred to me. Do you remember in the mansion, how Miss Nagato lost her connection to the Data Integration Thought Entity?"

I had no more time for this conversation. "The point, Koizumi."

"It stands to reason that if someone can block Nagato's connection to the Data Integration Thought Entity, Miss Suzumiya can, too."

"...So Haruhi isn't even trying to keep Nagato trapped here? Our worries were over nothing?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps the normally intuitive Miss Suzumiya has failed to recognize the connection. Or perhaps she left that escape route open as a test for Miss Nagato; if she tries to use it, that proves to Miss Suzumiya that she has a guilty conscience, and justifies killing her. In any case, I would not again encourage Miss Nagato to use that means of escape."

We said goodbye, and I hung up. Haruhi was nowhere in sight, so she must have gone inside to get the drinks. I had little if any time to call Nagato, but if Haruhi came out I could just quickly change the subject to Harbert's address. I dropped another quarter in and dialed.

The phone stopped ringing almost immediately, but there was silence on the line.

"Nagato?" I tried.

"Yes."

"Um, well... First of all, I want to apologize for yelling at you before, and for doubting what you – well, for saying you were lying."

"Fine."

I sighed. "No, not fine. It must have been incredibly hard for you to tell us what you did, and the way I responded made it even harder. I didn't want to accept that you would really betray us."

"Your response was better than I deserved."

"No. If I had endured the things you did, Nagato, I don't think I'd have done better. Also, because of the way I've acted, I think I owe you something, something I've avoided talking to you about." I hesitated, but she said nothing. "It's something I haven't even wanted to think about, but Nagato... if your reasons for remaking the universe have anything to do with the fact that it would have been just the two of us in the literary club..." This was hard, but I couldn't hesitate, or Nagato might think I was lying to make her feel better. And believe me, I wasn't. "...I want you to know that when I decided to change things back to this universe, I wasn't choosing anyone over you. It's just that I wanted the excitement and magic back, the adventures. I wanted there to be aliens, espers, and time travelers. Do you understand?"

After that heartfelt speech, I half-expected Nagato to express at least a hint of feelings for me. But after a pause, she said simply, flatly, "You forgot."

"Huh? What did I forget?"

"I told you that it was not my intent that you keep your original memories when I recreated the universe."

"So? What does that have to do with... Oh." That's right. The reason I went to the literary clubroom was to find some trace of the SOS Brigade. If I hadn't kept my original memories, I would never have had any cause to go there. Nagato and I might never have met in that reality, apart from... "...the library. What about when I got you the library card?"

"A natural occurrence in the absence of information altering abilities."

"You mean... if we hadn't gotten involved with the SOS Brigade, we would have both been at the library that day? But I hardly ever read books. What was I doing at the library?"

"Unknown."

"You didn't manipulate things so that we would meet?"

"I did not know if I, as a human, would want to know you. I wished for my life to occur naturally."

"Damn..." I covered my face with my free hand.

"This has caused a problem?"

"No, no problem," I said quickly. Honestly, why was I so disappointed that Nagato hadn't attempted to fix me up with her human self? If there was any girl in that timeline who I'd like to be in a two-person club with, it's the same one I'd choose in this timeline: Mikuru Asahina. It was a _good_ thing that Nagato's desires didn't conflict with my own, wasn't it?

Maybe it was just knowing that she'd meant to set me completely adrift, without any of them. Even Haruhi hadn't done that. I remembered, when we were in closed space together, she'd assured me that Koizumi, Nagato, and Miss Asahina would all be there with us in the new world she was making. She'd wanted a world that would make us both happy, not just herself.

Of course, Haruhi was completely selfish a hundred times a day, and I forgave her. I could forgive Nagato for being selfish once in her life.

"Nagato, the important thing is, you don't deserve to die for what you did."

"I leave that for Miss Suzumiya to decide. It is her right."

"Just because she has powers?"

"Because though I wronged many with what I did, I wronged her more than anyone else."

This was so frustrating. "Don't you realize that it's just her subconscious that's running things here? If you're killed in this world, Haruhi will be more upset about it than any of us. Do you want to do that to her?"

"If she kills me here, logically, she will also erase all memory that I existed."

_Oh no. And Haruhi's already been saying she doesn't remember Nagato._

"Give me Frank Harbert's address."

_Would you do that to Nagato, Haruhi? Would you really?_ "Maybe we should call this off."

"You must trust Haruhi Suzumiya."

"Why? You just said yourself that she may be planning to kill you!"

"Because that is what you do."

_...Right._

I gave her the address.

When I hung up, Haruhi still hadn't reemerged from the store. Maybe she was killing time in hopes that I'd come in to check on her and she could rope me into paying for the drinks. Or maybe she was having a confrontation with the proprietor. Whatever was happening, it was probably best if I just went back to the car and waited for her. I couldn't imagine that this was a serious plot point, and if I were in the car, I could easily claim that I'd been waiting there the whole time she was in the store.

I opened the car door.

"What _took_ you so long?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin. Haruhi was there, slumped down so far in her seat that her neck was bent at the point where your buttocks are supposed to rest, while her legs were chaotically twisted and propped up here and there among the pedals. No wonder I hadn't spotted her as I approached the car. How she'd gotten back to the car without my seeing her was harder to guess, but I was distracted enough by Nagato's revelation that I could have missed her.

"What are you doing down there?" I demanded.

"This is a very relaxing position. You should try it some time."

_Relaxing? You look like you're practicing to be a contortionist._

"Now you have to answer _my_ question! What took you so long?"

A dozen plausible lies came to mind. I could say that Barbara Wylie's husband answered the phone, and I had to wheel and deal to get Barbara herself on the phone. I could say I lost her phone number and had to try several permutations of the digits. I could say I figured while I was on the phone, I might as well pay my parents a call.

But in the end I just sighed and said, "I called the agency to let them know how things were going." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was the truth. As good as I could give her without getting into the fact that we were all visiting here from another dimension.

It didn't appease her. "And you spent a long time talking to Agnes, huh?"

"What? No. She said her little rhyme, and then I asked her to hand me on to Koizumi. He had a bunch of things he wanted to go over."

"Hmm. Okay." She sat up, revealing that the sodas were on the seat underneath her, and handed one to me. "But let me know next time. You shouldn't just keep a lady waiting!"

It was a relief to see her good mood so quickly restored, but as I took a relieving drink of soda, I couldn't help but worry about how sensitive she was being about the idea of me talking to Miss Asahina. I'd just spent the better part of a day with her (well, a day in this weird dimension, which I'm sure involved lots of scene jumping, but nonetheless), and she was acting jealous over what would have been a ten minute phone conversation with Miss Asahina.

Well, not jealous exactly... It was just like the look she gave me and Miss Asahina before storming out of the clubroom on Monday. The closest thing I could compare it to was the look on a kid's face when his parents tell him that he can't come along on a fun family outing because of bad behavior. But that analogy sounds as uncomfortably off as calling it jealousy. I just couldn't define it.

Whatever it was, it couldn't be healthy.


	11. The Last to Know

**Author's notes**: I don't think I've ever underestimated the length of one of my works this much. Ten chapters is indeed the bare minimum, as I said, but I'm now working on chapter 16 and can confirm there will be 17 chapters plus an epilogue. This seems like a good time to take a break, and potentially let my reviewers catch up, so next Thursday you'll instead see a new short story. Two weeks from now we'll be back with chapter 12.

\- Chapter 11: The Last to Know -

We had dinner to celebrate the closing of the case. Haruhi, Koizumi, Miss Asahina, and me. It felt wrong to leave out Nagato, but there wasn't much we could do about it. I might be the "boss", but Haruhi had done the casting, and Nagato's character wouldn't comfortably fit in at this party.

_Huh. Could Haruhi have cast Nagato the way she did as a form of group shunning? Punishing her for what she did by excluding her from the SOS Detective Agency's adventures and group activities? That's certainly more of a Haruhi way of doing things than killing Nagato would be._

Buoyed by that thought, when Haruhi raised her glass of juice and announced, "A toast to a successful case!", I raised my glass with the rest of them, without any muttering about how the case wasn't really successful given that the person we'd given the address to was an impostor with unknown motives. It was funny to think that Haruhi actually knew that, knew the whole solution to the mystery, but was keeping in ignorance whatever part of her it was that was happily clinking glasses with us.

I was seated beside Haruhi on one side of the table, with Koizumi and Miss Asahina on the other side. The bill was coming to me, but it wasn't quite a normal SOS Brigade gathering. Though Haruhi had already demonstrated a willingness to visit our usual cafe while in this world, we were instead dining at a more formal, adult place that seemed native to the _Moonlighting_ world: the food and decor were both Western style, and the staff were all Caucasians. Presumably Haruhi had chosen the place, though I had no memory of the selection process. I guess we'd jumped over that part.

"You two are an incredible duo, Ms. Addison," Koizumi said after taking a sip from his glass for the toast. "A perfect synergy of personalities and deductive instincts. Long may you be cracking cases together!"

_I think I hate Herbert Koizumi even more than Itsuki Koizumi._

"Everyone, this is only the beginning for the SOS Detective Agency!" Haruhi pronounced, sweeping her hands out like a ringmaster announcing the next circus act. "So long as we keep our minds open and our hearts believing, we'll have case after case to solve, paycheck after paycheck rolling in! We'll have mind-numbing mysteries to crack, eccentric characters to meet, thrilling yet hilarious car chases to... um..." She turned to me. "Well, you're the boss, so pick whatever verb you want!"

"Race?" I tried.

"Hmm. Awkward and unimaginative, but I guess I can live with it." _Don't critique my word choice when you can't even come up with your own._ "The point is, from here on out we're going to keep moving up and up! We'll have so many clients coming in, Herbert and Agnes will be spinning off into their own adventures!"

"Whu-wh-why the two of us?" Miss Asahina had gone completely pink.

"Well, you have such good chemistry together."

"That is true," Koizumi said, rubbing at his cheek. "Not as good as you and Mr. Hayes, of course, but..."

_Do you think you could stop throwing me and Haruhi at each other for just one minute? Please. I have even more reasons to not want to be in a relationship with her in this universe than I do in the real world. Also, you and Miss Asahina getting together is happening over my dead body._

Haruhi smiled benevolence upon them. "Plus, you're the two next best detectives in the agency. Of course, it's up to Mr. Hayes whether or not you two can take on an assignment together. He's the boss!"

_Stop. Saying. That._

The food was pretty good. Strange, but I appreciated the change of pace. It was probably one of the few meals I'd actually eaten in this world, instead of just scene-jumping and "remembering" eating later on, because the flavor and texture left an actual impression. The discussion stayed lively, despite the fictional nature of most of the things we were talking about, and Miss Asahina looked very cutely put out by Koizumi's comparing their chemistry unfavorably to ours. It felt like we were finally taking a breather from all the worry and confusion that had beset us since coming to this "pocket realm". Haruhi was happy, and that meant the rest of us could breathe easy and enjoy ourselves.

After we'd finished eating, Haruhi took three toothpicks and marked one. "Since those posters seem to be working, we should put up some more. Let's split up into pairs, and each pair will take a neighborhood. We'll meet back here in an hour." She didn't ask my permission for this plan, even though I was ostensibly the boss, but that was fine with me. "Whoever draws the marked toothpick goes with me."

She had Miss Asahina pick first. Since she was in the seat opposite hers, Haruhi had to lean across the large table to reach. Because of this awkward stretch, her fingers loosened around the bottom of the toothpicks, and I could see which one was marked.

Miss Asahina picked an unmarked one. Koizumi immediately reached for his pick, but Haruhi jerked back to our side of the table and said, "Now you pick, Kyon."

Though I could no longer see the mark on the toothpick, I remembered which one it was. If I picked the marked toothpick, I'd go with Haruhi. Unmarked, and I'd go with Miss Asahina.

Easy decision. I picked the unmarked one.

As soon as I did, a scowl formed over Haruhi's face. _There it is again__ – __that negative reaction to me being with Miss Asahina. Like jealousy, but different somehow. Seriously, what's her problem? I've been at her side for practically every minute of this simulated episode, and she gets cheesed off just because a random drawing decides that -_

_ Crap. She let me see which toothpick was marked on purpose, didn't she? The whole drawing was a test to see which of them I'd rather be with. That's why she had Miss Asahina pick first and me pick second. Ordinarily I wouldn't give a damn about Haruhi knowing that I'd rather spend time with Miss Asahina than her, but this could well be connected to her reason for keeping us in this world. Crap, crap, crap._

As we left the restaurant, I sidled up to Haruhi and said in her ear, "Don't be a grouch. Spending time with Mr. Koizumi isn't a death sentence." She grumbled wordlessly. "You should at least be grateful you didn't get paired with me. I'm sure you've gotten sick of having me in your face all the time."

"Because you've gotten sick of _me_, right?" she said without turning her head. She moved away from me and put her arm in Koizumi's, her other arm bearing the posters. "Have a nice time with Ms. Asahina."

Haruhi didn't sound bitter about it, just frustrated. The kind of frustration you feel when you've attempted a level in a video game a dozen times and are still stuck. And you're nowhere near ready to give up on it, but you're starting to wonder how you're ever going to beat it.

Still, her reaction was odd. Normally Haruhi wouldn't want to spend all her time with me. Nobody likes being around the same person all the time, no matter how fond of them they are, and while Haruhi was strange in a lot of respects, she had more than once made it clear that she needed her space, just like anyone else. So what was the deal?

Miss Asahina looked a little weary and shy. Haruhi had given her our share of the posters, and she pretended to busy herself with them as we walked.

"So, how have you been, Miss Asahina?" I tried.

"Pretty good," she nodded.

I couldn't resist asking. "How are things between you and Mr. Koizumi?"

"Fine." She nodded again.

It was starting to feel like I was talking to Nagato. "Look, I know that lately it seems like I've been ignoring you, and not giving you the sort of work you deserve, after the years you've put into the agency. I didn't mean for things to be that way."

"That's okay. It sounds like you and Ms. Addison are getting some good work lined up for me and Herbert, and I really do trust you guys. Ms. Addison, especially. She's always been so supportive."

"Yeah, she – What?" I looked to her face to see if she was serious. "Haruhi, supportive?"

"Uh huh." She stopped to put up a poster. "Even before you came to the agency, Ms. Addison always made things fun, no matter how bad business was. If anyone is feeling blue, she always finds a way to make them laugh. I know you think she's not responsible enough, and really, that's one of the things that makes it so great to have you with us, but Ms. Addison is responsible in her own way. She looks after us, and does everything she can to make us happy. She may not have a great head for business – just between you and me, I don't think these posters have anything to do with our getting more clients – but she cares about us."

"Okay, that does it." _I can't believe Haruhi is doing this. Does she think that just because she has these powers, she can do whatever she wants and we'll stand for it? No way. And since I've been thinking about filling Miss Asahina in, anyway... _"'Ms. Addison' doesn't care about anyone but herself. Listen, you're not a receptionist named Agnes, okay? You're Mikuru Asahina, a time traveler."

"W-what?" She spun around, planting her back against the wall. "Wh-what are you saying?"

"You remember, don't you? Koizumi, Nagato, and I all remembered. You came from the future to look after Haruhi Suzumiya. Haruhi made me curry bread and had you give it to me. You had pity on her and told me that she made it, so that I could thank her. And for that, she tried to yank your hair out. I got mad when I caught her doing that, and so she brought us to this fantasy world where she can pretend that none of that happened and you and Koizumi think she's this incredibly nice person and a brilliant detective. She doesn't think she can be nice enough for us to like her, so instead she's forcing -"

"Shut up!"

I fell back a step. Was that Miss Asahina who had just shouted?

"Just sh-shut up!" She was trembling, and tears were starting to stream down her face. "Wh-why do you have to make me remember that old world? You're just like Miss Suzumiya; you can never leave anything alone! The best thing she's ever done for me is taking me to this world where you aren't yourselves! I h-hate both of you! I wish I didn't have to classified information!"

She turned and ran, dropping the posters in a scattered heap.

I broke out of my shocked stupor. "Miss Asahina, wait! I..." She wasn't out of shouting distance yet, but she ignored me. She already had a substantial lead, and she was running so fast, even with her short legs, that I stood little chance of catching her.

I couldn't blame her. She'd been such a trooper about Monday's events, it hadn't even occurred to me to be gentle about reintroducing her to the real world. Going in an instant from having a considerate and responsible boss, a "supportive" supervisor, and an earnest love interest to a mission babysitting the world's most unreasonable despot had to be a violent jump. I hadn't caused any of her struggles, but I certainly hadn't made them easier for her.

I bent down and gathered up the posters from the street. With the way this world worked, it probably wouldn't make a difference whether or not I put any of these up, at least not so long as Haruhi _thought_ we'd put them up, but there was no sense in letting them go to waste.

As I proceeded to throw up posters on any available surface, it occurred to me that I'd also been too quick to jump to conclusions. Haruhi didn't necessarily contrive for 'Herbert' and 'Agnes' to idolize her; it could be that's the way it was on _Moonlighting_. Sure, she might have picked the show for that reason, but it was more likely just happenstance. After all, she was watching the show that very evening, so it was probable that she just threw us all into the first fictional universe that came to mind. Just something to get away from the problems she was facing in the real world.

I liked that idea. It meant that I didn't have to think about things like why Haruhi put herself in a world where she'd thought she'd killed an old man, our employees got into fist fights at work, and (most perplexing of all) she and I were "partners". Because then all of that would be meaningless, just random tosses of the dice.

I liked it. But I couldn't make myself believe it. Haruhi had picked _Moonlighting_ for a reason; I just couldn't put my finger on what it was.

I passed by an electronics shop. In the window were displayed a bunch of TVs which were showing the news. Something caught my ear, and I stopped and looked. People in uniform were carting away a body under a sheet.

"Mr. Harbert, paroled just six months ago, was found dead by a young parishioner..."

_Oh, man._

_ Nagato?_


	12. Insider Information

\- Chapter 12: Insider Information -

Haruhi pounded on the hotel room door like she was a police officer conducting a drug raid. Waiting behind her for someone to answer, it struck me, incongruously, that she'd never questioned me about my time alone with Miss Asahina. Sure, once she got the news that Frank Harbert had been killed because of our tracking him down, it made sense that that issue would get shoved to the curb, but you'd think that when we met up back at the restaurant, she'd have at least asked why Miss Asahina wasn't with me.

Come to think of it, us all meeting back up at the restaurant was strangely vague in my memory. We must have just did some scene jumping. The whole pairing off to put up posters thing couldn't have been borrowed from the actual TV show, since Nagato told us "Herbert" wasn't in the cast when this episode was filmed, which meant it must have been Haruhi's idea. Which in turn meant it was up to her to manage the resulting plot threads. And as seen in the SOS Brigade's film, continuity was not something Haruhi gave a lot of attention to. So apparently, my pairing off with Miss Asahina and coming back alone had simply been forgotten. Lucky me.

So why did I feel disappointed?

The door opened, and just like that I received the answer to a completely different question. On the other side of the door was Nagato, her black dress and veil now replaced by a bathrobe and slippers. The blonde wig was gone. Her mustache was out and proud in the open. Man, did I ever want to shave that thing right off her face.

Of course, I was much more concerned about the revelation of her role in this drama. If she was here, that meant she had to be playing the part of Barbara Wylie's husband. Which also explained why she would pose as Barbara Wylie and murder Frank Harbert.

"Yes?" she said.

"Good morning. I'm Haruhi Addison."

"I'm Herbert Koizumi."

Koizumi nudged me. "And I'm Kyon Hayes." _Seriously, how many times are we going to have to introduce ourselves to Nagato?_ "We need to speak to Barbara Wylie."

Nagato said, "May I ask why?"

"Sure, knock yourself out!" Haruhi pushed past her into the hotel room.

"Hey." This was probably meant to be an angry objection, but with Nagato's speech being Nagato's speech, you can guess how it sounded. "You don't understand. My wife is very sick. She doesn't have business with anyone."

Koizumi blocked her off. "Don't worry, my bosses know all about it. They know what they're doing. Top notch professionals."

"Huh, looks like she isn't here," Haruhi said after looking around the room for all of two seconds.

"Maybe behind that folding screen?" I suggested.

"Hey, yeah! Good eye, Kyon!"

_I get the feeling that you're patronizing me. ...But I'll take it over your usual straight-up insults._

Some blonde hair and a pair of eyes, with a forehead in between, peeked over the top of the folding screen. "What do you want?" asked a voice with the same rasp Nagato had mimicked in the SOS Detective Agency's offices.

"Frank Harbert is dead," I told her.

"I saw the news."

"Then you should know why we're here," Haruhi said.

"I don't understand. Who are you people?"

"Don't play dumb. You hired us to find Frank Harbert for you! You told us you loved him!"

_Nope, that was Nagato. And I can't believe you, Koizumi, and I all have to stand here pretending we don't know that._

Barbara Wylie was looking at us both with eyes as wide as flying saucers. "What are you saying? Why would I want anything to do with the man who disfigured me?"

"You tell us! You're the one who hired us!"

"I've never seen you before. I've certainly never hired you!"

"Yeah? Well I've got records and a whole bunch of employees which say you came into our office, told us you loved Frank Harbert, paid us $5,000 - minus a 20% discount since Harbert's an alien - to find him, and when we did, you murdered him!"

Barbara Wylie now had the same look in her eyes as Miss Asahina had the first time Haruhi ordered her to put on a bunny suit. "Why are you saying these ridiculous things? Yuki, please, make them stop!"

_Yuki?! ...I mean, it _is_ an androgynous name, but somehow I thought Haruhi wouldn't use the same real name, fictional name combo with Nagato as she did with the rest of us._

In any case, I couldn't stand to watch an innocent woman being driven to such distress any longer. "Come on, Haruhi; she's obviously not going to admit to anything. Let's just go."

Nagato, having apparently extricated herself from the overly-helpful Herbert Koizumi, planted one palm on Haruhi's shoulder and the other on mine, and started pushing. "Yes. Go. Get out of here. Leave my wife alone."

_Very convincing, Nagato. Especially with you being shorter and scrawnier than either of us. I mean, I know that you could in fact lift an elephant, but not many people would be intimidated by Clark Kent._

"You think you've gotten away with this?" Koizumi jabbed a finger at Barbara Wylie like he was Phoenix Wright. "We're going to follow every lead, check every fingerprint, watch you wherever you go until we have all the proof we need to have you locked up where you belong! The SOS Detective Agency isn't going to give up until you've been brought to justice!"

"You tell her, Herbert!" Haruhi cheered, even as she allowed Nagato's limp shoving to hustle us out of the room.

Koizumi sidled along after us, allowing Nagato to shut the door.

* * *

Naturally I had a dozen questions that I couldn't ask Nagato without breaking character, but there was no chance to double back and ask them, because we had all piled back into the car and driven back to the agency without that thought ever entering my head. It had to be scene jumping again. Though really, I'm not sure how I could have contrived to go back there anyway. Even Haruhi had enough sense to see that, from the perspective of this fictional universe, talking any further to "Yuki Wylie" was a completely stupid idea.

I didn't even have the chance to talk to Miss Asahina in private, though she was at least at her desk and looking her usual self. Well, usual for this universe. Any chance to check how she was doing after our unhappy exchange the night before would have to wait until Haruhi was done laying out her latest big plan.

"Now we've got them right where we want them!" She clenched a fist, an eager gleam in her eye.

"We do?"

"Of course! Kyon, we did it! We made them think we're a bunch of stooges! Now they'll have their guard down, so we can go into stealth mode and catch them with the evidence."

_Oh. Of course. How clever of us, making it look like we're novices with no idea what we're doing._

"So, want to pick your favorite newspaper to hide behind and head to their hotel for some good old-fashioned surveillance?"

"Um..." Suddenly this plot was progressing a bit too fast for my liking. I still wasn't sure if Haruhi was planning to kill Nagato or not, and I wasn't eager to find out the hard way. "Hold on. Maybe we're on the wrong track. It could be just coincidence that Frank Harbert got murdered right after we gave Barbara Wylie his address."

"Coincidence? That's not just boring; it's stupid. Getting murdered isn't something that happens to you once a month!"

"Okay, maybe not. But that doesn't mean the Wylies are our only suspects. Maybe Barbara Wylie told someone else that she was going to get back together with Frank Harbert, a close friend maybe, and they decided to save her from herself by killing Harbert."

"Hmm. Interesting theory." She actually looked mildly impressed. "You know, it makes me think of something else... Maybe the government knows about Harbert being an alien, and were keeping watch on Barbara Wylie, waiting for her to contact him, so they could eliminate him."

_Um, if the government wanted to know where Harbert was, couldn't they have just checked with the parole board like we did? And why would they want to kill him?_ But I didn't want to discourage any theory which would keep Haruhi away from Nagato, so I just nodded.

"But we'll need to keep an eye on Wylie, too, since she's our prime suspect and our best lead if your theory is correct. Let's split up into two teams."

That would do absolutely nothing to keep the plot away from Nagato. "I don't know. Barbara Wylie just doesn't seem like a killer. Maybe -"

"Okay then, if that's how you feel, you head up the team checking out the government theory. I'll take the Wylie team."

Still getting nowhere. "Listen, I'm saying that I don't think we need to check out the Wylies at all. I already had Mr. Koizumi spy on Barbara Wylie earlier, didn't I, Koizumi?"

"That's right, Mr. Hayes." He smiled. "And I found absolutely no evidence of her committing murder."

Haruhi shook her head. "As refreshing as it is to see someone so proud of having found nothing, this just proves that we need to look harder. Everyone knows that if you can't find evidence on a suspect, that means they're good at hiding evidence."

_Once again, there's no possible situation that doesn't look suspicious to Haruhi._ "Or it means they're innocent. Either way, if Koizumi couldn't find evidence before, I don't see how we're likely to find anything now."

"So how could it possibly hurt? And how could it be good to pass over the obvious suspects?" She wagged a finger. "You're talking zero sense, Kyon. You just worry about your suspects, and let me worry about mine."

Only one thing left to do. "But I want to go with you."

"Huh?"

I turned my head, unable to stand looking at her as I said this. "I don't care which of them you're going after. I just want to go with you. Ms. Asahina and Mr. Koizumi can take care of the others."

"Is this another joke?"

"Why would I joke about something like that?"

Haruhi's face crinkled. I couldn't tell what she was confused about. If it was so inconceivable that I would ever want to pair up with her, then why did she do the toothpick test the evening before?

Koizumi stepped in. "Ms. Addison, if I may... I think what Mr. Hayes is trying to say is, however much he may disagree with you, there's no one else he would rather have at his side."

"On a case," I added by way of clarification. Damn Koizumi and his matchmaking efforts.

"I see." Haruhi nodded. "Well, that makes sense, then."

* * *

There were already a half dozen people waiting for the elevator. It was pretty crowded when we all piled in. Ordinarily I'd look upon that as just bad luck, but in this world, the only explanation was that Haruhi wanted to have some sort of awkward and therefore interesting situation to happen.

However, Koizumi took a step back. "You know, I don't do so well in crowded places. I'm going to just wait for the next elevator."

I saw my chance. "You know, I think I'll wait for the next one too. See you girls at the bottom."

I dove out just as the doors started to close. "H-Hey!" I heard Haruhi protest.

I allowed a sigh of relief as the doors shut. "I was beginning to think we'd never get a chance to talk. So, did you really keep an eye on Nagato like I asked?"

"I did," Koizumi nodded.

"So, did she kill Harbert?"

Koizumi stepped forward to push the elevator button again. "The most likely answer to that question seems to be yes and no."

I looked away in disgust. "I should know better than to expect better from you."

"Be patient. When you're looking at one world from the perspective of having lived your whole life in another one, answers are often not straightforward." He looked up at the display to see what floor the girls were on. "After I arrived, Miss Nagato left the hotel, at a time consistent with her committing the murder. However, when I tried to follow her, I found myself blocked off by a wall of nonexistence."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning there is no scene showing what Miss Nagato did after leaving the hotel. If she killed Harbert, as we can logically assume she did, then his death happened only by implication. Miss Nagato will remember killing him, but she never actually pulled the trigger."

"I see. ...Well, even if he's only an automaton, it's a relief that Nagato didn't actually murder anyone."

"But under the rules of Miss Suzumiya's world, she did. We seem to be following the path of the worst-case scenario."

"But Haruhi's obviously enjoying herself. You really think she'd kill someone when she's feeling like that?"

"There's a difference between the mood she's in as she appears to us and the mood she was in when she set up this scenario. It's possible that it's too late for her to rewrite the plot."

That seemed dumb to me. Haruhi, unable to make a change to the world? A world she herself had created? Don't make me laugh. "By the way, I told Miss Asahina what's going on."

"Ah. And has she offered some brilliant means to get us out of this realm?"

_Wise guy._ "It's not about whether or not she can help. She deserved to know."

"Admirable, but you should also be considering the consequences of your actions." He shrugged. "This needlessly complicates things, if you ask me, but you didn't."

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside. "Anyway, I don't hear you offering any ideas for getting out of here."

"Admittedly no. I see that as your job, seeing as changing Miss Suzumiya's mind is your forte. However, I do have an idea for protecting Miss Nagato. Since the villain we are trying to bring to justice committed murder out of a desire for revenge, you can use that to segue into a discussion about how this is wrong."

"That's another thing. If Haruhi wanted revenge on Nagato, why pick an episode that's all about wrongful revenge?"

He smiled. "Self-awareness, I'm afraid, is not one of Miss Suzumiya's strengths. By the by, it was most charming of you to voice your desire to spend time with her. I'm sure she appreciates it."

_And there it is._ "Someone has to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn't go after Nagato."

"You could have had me do it."

"Really? You really think she would let me work alone with Miss Asahina?"

"She already did. Yesterday evening, remember? What's new is _you_ allowing me to work alone with her."

"...Fine." I was exasperbated. I could handle Koizumi's insinuations most of the time, but to simply ignore the very obvious reason why I wanted to go with Haruhi was ridiculous. "You forced me to say this. You're right about you not being any good at changing Haruhi's mind, and I knew it. That's why I volunteered to go with her. If I relied on you -"

I stopped there, because the elevator had opened again, and Haruhi was awaiting apologies for keeping her and Miss Asahina waiting.


	13. Snooping

\- Chapter 13: Snooping -

"How long do we have to sit here?"

"Till we spot her," Haruhi whispered back to me. "If you didn't want to do the newspapers in the lobby thing, you should have gone with the B team."

For those not well-versed in the detective genre, the "newspapers in the lobby thing" involved the two of us sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby, holding newspapers in front of us so that we could keep an eye on who was coming and going while keeping our own faces blocked so that our target wouldn't recognize us. We were both wearing business suits, so we would have been inconspicuous enough if not for our bickering.

"I didn't say I don't want to do the newspapers in the lobby thing," I returned. "It's just that it would be nice to have an end in sight. And by the way, your choice in paper..." I let a note of disgust fall into my voice as I glanced at the headline above her left thumb, "Passengers' Chilling Tale of Terror: Satan Was Our Pilot".

"My choice of paper? As if you have any room to criticize. You're not even reading yours!"

"No, I definitely am."

She sniffed. "The comic strips don't count as reading, Kyon."

"Well, they're not half as embarrassing as having my head buried in that scandal sheet."

"Hey, it's not just scandals. There are important stories in these pages."

"'Stories' is right."

"Did Truman drop the atomic bombs because he was warned by a visitor from the future that Japan was going to win the war with the United States? I want to know! Is the Chilean government keeping a three-headed alien prisoner in the heart of a volcano? I want to know! Is a clone of Elvis pop idol Leo Ieiri's real father? I want to -"

"Can you keep it down? The Wylies can probably hear you all the way from their room."

"You're such a wet blanket. We'll spot her well before she's close enough to hear that. If you don't want these stake-outs to feel interminable, you've gotta learn to live a little."

She wasn't completely wrong. If Haruhi had scripted this episode so that the Wylies wouldn't be alerted to our presence, then they wouldn't be alerted to our presence if we announced ourselves through a megaphone. After all, Nagato wanted to adhere to Haruhi's script, come what may. But that wasn't the reason why I wanted her to quiet down. Even though I wasn't going to see any of these people (if they were people at all, remembering what Koizumi said) after we got back to the real world, sitting beside Haruhi while she loudly proclaimed her interest in the paranormal was embarrassing.

Haruhi glanced at me. "You do look yummy in that suit, though. Maybe instead of reading newspapers, we can pretend to be -"

"Knock that off."

"Okay, fine. You look completely average in that suit."

"Much better," I muttered.

"So you like it better when I put down your appearance?"

"I like it better when you're honest. I like it better when you're yourself." _And not "Haruhi Addison"._

"Are _you_ coming on to _me_ now?"

"Nobody's coming on to anybody. I'm just saying, I don't mind it when a girl tells me I'm good looking with sincerity," _Not that any girl ever has._ "...but when I hear it from someone who doesn't believe it, just as part of playing some role, that's insulting. And I know you love to insult me, but you should at least have the courage to do it straight."

"What are you talking about? Of course I have the courage. But if you want no more fake compliments, then you got it."

_One less annoyance on my mind._ "Hey," I lowered the paper a moment. "There she is."

She was wearing the black dress and veil, but at this distance I couldn't tell if it was Nagato or her wife. His wife. Her female automaton that is playing the wife of the character that she's playing. Aagh, no matter how I describe her it sounds horribly disturbing.

After a surreptitious look around, she headed out the door. Watching her move, I became certain it was Nagato. No one else had that inhumanly steady, unhurried lope. We took our papers and went after her.

Outside, she stepped into a waiting taxi and took off. Haruhi hailed us a taxi cab of our own. As we climbed in, she said to the driver, "There's an extra fifty bucks for you if you -" She paused dramatically. "- follow that cab!"

We drove off. Studying the satisfied grin on Haruhi's face, I said, "You've always wanted to say that, huh?"

"I'll let you say it next time."

_Who said I wanted there to be a next time?_ "I still think Barbara Wylie was telling the truth."

"Why's that?"

"Well," I scratched my jaw. "She just sounded so sincere, so genuinely confused by everything we said."

"Hmmph. Is that all? I guess you still haven't been in this business long enough. People are liars, Kyon, and criminals are professionals at it. They can make the foulest untruth sound totally sincere. If you're a detective, you can't trust anyone but your partner."

Was she just being melodramatic, or did she really believe that, because of what Nagato did when she trusted her with her powers? "People do lie sometimes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ever trust them again," I said. As if that were some great insight. "There are people who lie all the time, and people who are honest all the time, but most are honest people who tells lies now and then. Sometimes you have to forgive people, and open up to them, even if it means you might get hurt again. Otherwise, you'll miss out on some good friends."

"Friends? Who said anything about friends? I'm talking about trust. You can have friends who lie to you, but you shouldn't trust them. You should only trust people who never lie to you. Like how you never lie to me, so I know I can count on you."

She wasn't picking up on the fact that I was talking about Nagato. Or was pretending not to pick up on it.

"Hey." She leaned forward in her seat. "Look at this."

Nagato's taxi had pulled over at a car rental place. She went in, came out a minute later, and drove off in one of the available cars.

"Huh," I said, puzzled, as our driver continued to follow her.

"Don't you get it? She doesn't want the cab company to have a record of where she's been."

_That made sense._ "But that just means she's up to something secret. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Frank Harbert," I tried.

"What, it's just an amazing coincidence?"

"Well... Amazing coincidences have to happen sometimes, don't they?"

"Well, sure. They can make things exciting. But what other secret could she have? It's not like she could be having an extramarital affair with that face."

"You shouldn't say things like that. What if something ruined _your_ face?"

"What's the problem? I'm not saying it where she can hear. Besides, she's a murderer, remember? Now stop trying to change the subject and just answer my question! What other secret could she possibly have?"

_Damned if I know. You're the one with the wild imagination._

We followed Nagato to a park with a river running through it. It seemed so ridiculous that I couldn't just walk up and talk to her. But she and Haruhi were both determined to play out this little drama. Two friends, in a fight so bitter that they wouldn't even talk to each other except in the roles of master detective and evil criminal, and I was just a third friend caught between them.

We got out and walked through the park, on the other side of the river from Nagato. The park was wide open, so we could still see her while keeping our distance. Typical of Nagato, she was taking her time. It almost felt like a nice stroll in the park.

I decided to try Koizumi's suggestion. "Haruhi, have you thought about why we're doing this?"

"To get evidence, Kyon. Honestly, do you need a junior detective kit?"

"I mean, why are we trying to catch Wylie at all. No one's paying us to do this."

"You want to let a woman get away with murder just because you're not being paid to catch her?" She didn't sound the least bit outraged when she said this. Like she already knew that wasn't what I meant, and was just trying to prod me for an explanation.

"Think of it from her perspective. She only murdered him because she wanted justice for what he did to her."

"He already got justice. What she did to him is revenge."

_Good, so we agree._ "And what we're doing to Wylie..."

"Yeah, it's justice. We're going to turn her in to the law."

I released a soft breath of relief, lost in the spring air. I didn't think Haruhi would want Nagato dead, but it was good to hear it. That relief lasted all of five seconds.

"Besides, she lied to us. She asked us to give her something, and when we gave it to her, she did something completely different with it than what she said she was going to. Doesn't that make you angry, and excited about getting her?"

A lump lodged itself in my throat. What she was saying was just as true of Yuki Nagato as it was of Yuki Wylie. "Well... I, uh... I think we should forgive her for that."

"Are you crazy? She hasn't even apologized for it. Or even admitted she did it!"

That also was true of both Wylie and Nagato. But the only reason Nagato hadn't apologized was because she couldn't do so without telling Haruhi about her powers, which would likely cause the destruction of the world, assuming Haruhi actually believed her. And she couldn't apologize in this world, because in this world Haruhi didn't even remember Nagato.

Before I could figure out where to take the debate from there, we both noticed Nagato make a move. There was a small pavilion, with a traditional slanted roof, projecting into the river. Nagato walked out onto it.

"Look!" Haruhi whispered.

Nagato gave a cursory look around, then took a gun out of her purse and dropped it into the water.

"You can apologize for questioning my suspicions any time."

_I'll get right on that when you start catching up on apologies for the thousand or so times you've belittled my ideas. So now what? Even Haruhi can't be distracted from the Wylies as suspects now. Should I go along with Nagato's plan – I mean, the plan she was scripted to use – and let Barbara Wylie take the blame?_

Haruhi tugged on my sleeve. "She's leaving. Come on."

"Shouldn't we get the gun?"

"We can do that later! Come on, we're going to miss an exciting part!"

_An exciting part? She's probably just headed back to the hotel._

* * *

_Called it._

It was evening as we pulled up to the hotel. Either whoever filmed this episode got the time of day screwed up, or that drive to the park was a few hours longer than it felt like. With the power of scene jumping, I couldn't be sure it wasn't the latter.

We watched Nagato go inside. "This is exciting?" I scoffed.

Haruhi pursed her lips. "I just had a feeling that something exciting was going to happen here, okay? Listen, Kyon. Sometimes you need to trust your intuition, or you'll never do anything interesting with your life. Now pay the driver and let's go."

_Why can't you pay for once? _I handed the driver a hundred dollar bill. _Why am I complaining; it's not like this is my real money._

We walked across the parking lot, vaguely in the direction of where our car might be. Forgetting where you parked – yeah, this was real exciting.

_Wait a second._

My steps froze before I could put my finger on what had made them do so. Out of the corner of my eye, it was Nagato, coming back out. _I don't know what she's up to, but I'd better make sure Haruhi doesn't -_

"What'd you stop for? Hey... Kyon, what's she doing coming back out of the hotel?"

_Dammit. Feet, why couldn't you have just kept on walking?_

"Come on." Haruhi grabbed my tie to pull me along, again tailing Nagato, who ducked into a door to a wing marked "Receiving".

We ducked in after, Haruhi thankfully releasing my tie in the process. I didn't need her to drag me along, period, and being dragged up a flight of stairs was rather on the unsafe side. And up the stairs was exactly where we went, once it became apparent that we'd lost sight of our quarry.

_Our quarry. I like that expression._ "Where are we going?" I asked.

"Shhh. My detective's instincts are giving me an idea."

_"Detective's instincts"? So more intuition. I guess I can't question it, since everyone's always talking about how Haruhi has this preternatural intuition. It's hard to think of any other explanation for how she does some of the things she does. Maybe this is how her intuition works: She watches things happen in one universe, then creates another universe where she's one of the people involved in those things, so even though she doesn't consciously remember the previous universe, she knows what to do. Maybe in the universe that existed before Haruhi recreated everything four years ago, we all were just characters in a TV show that Haruhi saw. She made us real, set things up so that we would meet, and..._

_ ...and I've been listening to Koizumi so much, I'm starting to spout insane theories, just like him. If the universe we came from is just a TV show, then why is there no scene jumping? Besides, a TV show which revolves around the routine insanity of the SOS Brigade could never get produced, because really, what kind of brain-damaged moron would want to watch that? Even the compensation of seeing Miss Asahina in revealing outfits wouldn't be enough to get people to tune in each week._

We were now on the roof. A short distance away were the rooms of the hotel's main wing. Near the roof's edge was a rectangular ventilation shaft. Haruhi took a seat on it and pulled me down beside her. "What are we doing?" I asked.

"Watching Barbara Wylie get undressed. You enjoy that sort of thing, don't you?"

"If I did, would I knock whenever I come to the clubroom to make sure Miss Asahina isn't getting changed?"

"Clubroom? Puh, never mind. Just keep your eyes on Barbara Wylie's window. It's room 413, right up there."

Actually, discretely watching a woman undress did sound pretty enjoyable. Having Haruhi beside me all the while, giving her approval, made it all the better, adding a touch of kinkiness. But there was the nagging aspect of violating someone's privacy, and the fact that this was a male Nagato we were spying on. If she did start taking her clothes off in front of the window, I was going to cover my eyes and run like hell.

...Not, of course, that I for one minute thought Haruhi seriously brought us up here to peep on Nagato while she undressed. Obviously, I knew she was joking. Even if Haruhi never jokes in normal circumstances, I could recognize when she was playing her role as Addison. I'm not a complete fool.

"Hmm. Maybe I misremembered the room number?" Haruhi pointed to another room, where the light had come on and the silhouette of Nagato in her dress and wig were visible.

"No," I assured her, without taking my eyes off the rows of rooms. "It was definitely 413."

"Well, why would she change rooms?" Her voice turned sour. "And why did you forget to bring the binoculars?"

"Me?" I watched Nagato turn off the room's surprisingly small TV set and head into the other room, where we couldn't see her. "This whole stakeout was your idea. Why didn't _you_ bring them?"

"You're the boss. You're supposed to take responsibility for these things."

_Then how come you never take responsibility when you're the boss, back in the real world? Also, since you created this world, how easy would it have been for you to make us have binoculars just by wishing for them?_

Nagato returned to the room with a bottle of soda pop and a book in hand. She sat down on the couch, spread the book out on her lap, and lifted the bottle towards her mouth. The mask was in the way, so she removed it.

Haruhi's breath caught in her throat.

"Oh," I said, remembering that I wasn't supposed to have seen her without the mask yet. "It's her husband."

Haruhi elbowed me. "Shouldn't you be more shocked than that?"

"Ah... Well, something about her did always seem masculine, like the way she walked. I just didn't know what to make of it until now." It was strange, now that I thought about it. Nagato was the one insisting "no spoilers", yet she'd given me and Koizumi the biggest spoiler of all by letting us see her with her mask off.

_ Then again, I guess I left her no choice when I recognized her in Haruhi's office. If I had been as oblivious to her identity as Koizumi was, she probably would have just gone straight back to her hotel room and let the whole episode play out as scripted. As it was, she needed to reassure me by telling me what was going on. Though of course I'm not very reassured by the knowledge that Haruhi might be planning to have Nagato die._

_ ...Wait a second. Nagato didn't have to mention that part, did she? She said she wants to experience whatever ending Haruhi has in mind, so why would she tell us about it? She had to know that we would want to protect her, or at least that I would. Is that what she really wants? Did she only say she wants to be at Haruhi's mercy so that the responsibility wouldn't be on my shoulders?_

_ She hasn't taken the option of having the Data Integration Thought Entity get her out of here. But maybe that's not an option at all. She could have lied about that. Like Koizumi said, Haruhi should have blocked that escape route. It's even possible that her big boss decided to leave her to her fate. I threatened to sic Haruhi on them if anything happens to Nagato, but what if Haruhi kills Nagato herself?_

_ So maybe the real reason Nagato stopped to talk to us back at the agency was because she wants our help?_

_ Or... because she wanted to say goodbye?_


	14. Worst Laid Plans

\- Chapter 14: Worst Laid Plans -

We were back at our office. It was the middle of the night, and I felt substantially more exhausted than I had when we were peeking into Nagato's hotel room. I don't mean just physically. I was tired of all my efforts to steer this episode's plot away from Nagato accomplishing nothing. It felt like I was playing through sidequest after sidequest in an RPG, only to always find that the only place to go next on the main story path is a cutscene where my favorite party member dies.

I still believed what I said at first: Haruhi wouldn't kill Nagato. It wasn't in her character. However. It would be just as wrong to stake Nagato's life on that belief as it was for Haruhi to stake her on the outcome of our duel with the Computer Science Club.

And I was fed up with having to babysit our brigade chief.

"I've got it!" Haruhi leapt out of her chair.

"What?"

"We just need to get into Yuki's room and get that dress and wig."

"What will those prove?"

"The key's probably in Barbara's room, so..."

"So?"

She grinned and rubbed her hands together. "So let's find you a black dress, a black veil, and a wig."

Her words were incomprehensible in a way that made my hairs stand on end. It was like I was the first person to hear the words "Take care of him" used as a euphamism for murder. "What are you talking about?" I demanded.

"You seriously don't get it? You've got to impersonate Barbara Wylie so you can get into her room and snoop around!"

"Me?!" I exploded. "Are you insane? I'm a guy! Plus, I'm over a head taller than Na- Yuki Wylie, which means I must be that much taller than Barbara Wylie too, since he's been impersonating her. Why don't _you_ do it?"

She looked me up and down, a contemplative hand on her chin. "I suppose we'll have to get you high heels and a bra, too, with some tissue paper to stuff into it. That's a trick some girls use to make their boobs seem bigger. I guess they have low self-esteem. Your legs will look a little funny with only a skirt to cover them, but..."

She wasn't listening to me, the grin still hadn't left her face, and I was starting to get the idea here. In the original, non-Haruhi version of this episode, Madeline Hayes must have been the one to wear the dress and veil to sneak into Barbara Wylie's room. Logically, since she had flipped the genders of Hayes and Addison, Haruhi should also have flipped the job of impersonating Barbara Wylie over to Addison - herself. But logic and Haruhi weren't acquainted with each other, and she had instead left that job to the Hayes character. I could guess why. It wasn't so long ago that she made me wear a reindeer costume, and got quite a kick out of it, too. Making me do embarrassing dress-ups was her latest mania, it seemed. It wouldn't even surprise me if her whole reason for picking this episode to reenact was because she wanted to get me in drag.

"I know just the stores to get all the stuff we need, too." Haruhi was bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I'll pick you up tomorrow morning at 9 sharp and we can go shopping. Let's bring Mr. Koizumi and Ms. Asahina, too, for support. Got it?"

"You know what? No. I'm not wearing women's clothes for you."

"Well, of course you're not doing it for me," she said, totally unfazed. "You're doing it to solve the case."

I raised my voice. "I'm not doing it for any reason."

"Hey, you can't punk out of me. We're partners, remember?"

_That does it._ "Oh, yeah? Were we partners when you decided to 'punish' Miss Asahina when you thought I'd be away from the clubroom? Were we partners when I was trying to have a serious talk with you about it and you hung up on me? Were we partners when you dragged us all to this insane universe so that you wouldn't have to deal with me? Were we partners when you decided to make Nagato the villain in your little play here?"

She frowned. "What are you talking about? Nagato again?"

"Hell, were we partners any time that you dragged me along on any of your crazy schemes?"

"Oh, so now you're going to tell me those weren't fun for you?" Her frown was now accompanied by half-lidded eyes. Not the angry kind, though. They were the kind that said _I founded a club for the purpose of finding aliens, espers, and time travelers, and even I don't __believe what you're saying for one second._

"That's not the point!" I clenched my fist. "You never give me a choice in any of your decisions, so don't tell me we're partners! You don't even know what the word means! To you, partners means that you come up with some stupid insane idea and I have to do all the heavy lifting!"

She was looking angry now, the fierce ridges on her forehead almost forming a "v". "So you think you can do without me, huh?"

"No." I folded my arms. "No, I can't do without you. But if I could choose anyone to be in charge of making my life fun and exciting, it sure wouldn't be you. I'd pick a real partner, someone who let me have a say in things once in a while."

"I let you make the call on giving Harbert's address to Barbara Wylie, didn't I?"

"I'm talking about real decisions! Not ones in a fantasy world!"

"What is that supposed to mean? Ugh, you're so impossible to understand sometimes! And for your information, you wouldn't be my first choice for a partner either."

I glowered down at her. "Oh, really?"

"What, you're really surprised that I'm not charmed by your bad attitude and constant complaining?"

"No, I'm surprised that you seem to think there's someone else who would put up with you for that long. I got bored of you and your stupid routine months ago. The only reason I haven't walked out is because I'm too stubbornly loyal."

I don't know why I said that. It was like the filter between my brain and my mouth had been torn clean off. Maybe I'd been stuck in this situation for too long.

And no, by this situation, I don't mean being in a universe where there's a big stretch of nothingness between the elevator doors and my house, teenagers run a detective agency, and every case has a plot twist. I mean not being allowed to talk to Haruhi about what happened on Monday. Always before, I could at least talk about it when something she did angered or annoyed me. She'd probably be dismissive, and certainly she'd never apologize, but it was something at least to be able to vent my righteous indignation. There were even times where she listened to reason, like with the photos now kept in the Mikuru folder, or when she formally invited Nagato back into the band after kicking her out. But after what she did on Monday, she just completely shut me out. No talking about it, and she'll hang up on you and beam you over to another reality if you try. I'd held in my frustration at that for a good long while, but I couldn't hold it in forever.

Whyever I said it, it set Haruhi trembling and gritting her teeth. "You know what?" she said, slow and deadly. I flinched, but the explosion I was fearing didn't come. "If you think you don't need me as a partner, then you can go ahead and solve this case your way, and I'll solve it my way."

I don't think she'd ever proposed going on an adventure without me before.

"Fine!" I snapped.

"Fine!"

We both attempted to storm out the office at once. Since there was only one door out, this resulted in a shoving match. She won.

As I lay sprawled on the floor, watching Haruhi strut out of the SOS Detective Agency, the antiseptic smell of the carpet restored some amount of sense and reason to my brain. And when that came back, it occurred to me that I might have just signed Nagato's death warrant.


	15. Not Feeling Like Herself Today

\- Chapter 15: Not Feeling Like Herself Today -

I sagged my way into the SOS Detective Agency the next morning. My eyelids could barely muster enough motivation to open themselves a crack. It wasn't that I was tired. Frankly, I was depressed by my fight with Haruhi the previous night.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't think that an argument with me was likely to make Haruhi go homicidal on Nagato. Nonetheless, if our goals were for Haruhi to forgive Nagato and take us back to the real world, yelling at her about how you don't like being with her and don't think anyone else could stand being around her wasn't a good way of accomplishing either.

I stopped by Miss Asahina's desk. "Is Ms. Addison in yet?"

"No," she said, her eyes lowered.

I nodded and moved on.

"W-wait." I stopped. "Um, listen. I... I'm sorry about what I said to you the other night. I don't hate you. Or Miss Suzumiya."

I smiled at her. "Of course not."

"It's just... If Miss Suzumiya is keeping us in this universe indefinitely... Do you and Mr. Koizumi really need to change her mind? I mean, what's so bad about living in this world?"

_Oh. Koizumi must have filled her in when the two of them were paired off yesterday._ "Well... I suppose the biggest problem is that it's not real. A place where everything is strange and exciting cases, dramatic arguments, and deep revealing personal conversations is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. I need the occasional ordinary, quiet day where I can just sit through classes, sip some of your tea, play a game with Koizumi, and listen to Haruhi spout meaningless nonsense. Do you understand?"

She gave a reluctant nod.

"Also, while Agnes Asahina seems to be every bit as charming and... cute as, as Mikuru Asahina..." We both blushed. "...well, Herbert Koizumi and Haruhi Addison get on my nerves. At least when Koizumi is being obsequious in the real world, you know he's just faking it. 'Herbert' does it for real. And hearing Haruhi talk about how well a pant suit hugs my buttocks is wrong on so many levels."

"W-w-well... Not to embarrass you, but... y-you do look quite handsome in a suit."

"Not to her. Haruhi doesn't care about things like looks, and she doesn't like my looks. The point is, it's all phony. This isn't the real world, and we aren't our real selves. That can be fun for a change, but I don't want to be here forever."

"I understand." She put her forearms up on the desk counter to rest them there. "But even though Miss Suzumiya has done some nice things for me, like stopping Nozawa from bothering us, there are things she does that I'll never get used to. Things that... I feel like I just can't stand any longer. Mainly... it's the costumes." She shivered. "It just feels so demeaning when she makes me wear them, and..."

"Miss Asahina." I laid a hand on one of her wrists and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "You don't have to explain. I know how you feel about Haruhi treating you like a toy, and I understand."

"...Thank you." She looked up at me and smiled as she said this, then looked down again. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, I removed my hand. "It was thinking about that which made me so upset when you reminded me of who I really am. I don't want to have Miss Suzumiya forcing me into a costume ever again. Please, don't make me go through with that."

This wasn't good. We probably didn't need Miss Asahina's help to convince Haruhi to let us out of this place, but the SOS Brigade were supposed to agree on all their decisions. If I forced Miss Asahina to go along with what I wanted, then I was no better than Haruhi. "But don't you have reasons to go back to the real world, too? What about all your friends, like Miss Tsuruya?"

"I'm sure I'll miss them sometimes, but it'll be alright. I've already had to leave behind all my friends in the future, you know, and I've known most of them a lot longer than any of my friends in your time." I'd never thought about that before. "And at least I'll still have you, and everyone else in the SOS Brigade! We'll go on having our adventures, and I'll never have to wear another of -"

The agency door slammed open, and there in the doorway was my "partner". In one hand she had a replica of the dress and mask Nagato had been wearing, in the other a boom box (an antique device I recognized only as Hayes), and on her face were a pair of sunglasses and her thousand-watt smile. "Good morning, guys and gals! Are we all feeling happy today? If you aren't..." She deposited the boom box on top of the reception desk and pushed play. "...then I've got the cure!"

As she said this, "Good Lovin'" by the Young Rascals came blasting out of the boom box. This cheery greeting got a lot of grins from the assembled staff of the SOS Detective Agency. A few of them even started dancing to the music. Miss Asahina gave me a look that seemed to say, "See, isn't Miss Suzumiya much better like this?"

Without moving from where I stood, I reached out a finger and pushed "stop" on the boom box.

"Well, if it isn't Grumpy Gus," she said, still grinning at me beneath her sunglasses. I didn't like how they looked on her, by the way. They hid her eyes, which were one of her best features. "What's the cloud that's blocking your sunshine?"

"This agency is culpable in a murder," I said. "That doesn't seem like an occasion to celebrate." _Or to indulge in role-playing as annoying TV show characters._

"It's all being taken care of, Kyon baby!" _Shudder._ "As you can see, I've got the dress. You sure you don't fancy trying it on?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, then, it's fortunate that the SOS Detective Agency has multiple employees on staff." She turned to Miss Asahina, hefting the dress and mask at her. "How about it, Agnes? Let's see how you look in black."

Miss Asahina looked at Haruhi and the outfit with eyes as big as an anime character's. Her hands trembled. Her lower lip quivered. "N... Nuh... Nuh..."

Haruhi pushed her sunglasses down her nose so as to peer at her over the lenses. "What's up, kid?"

"Nuh... N-N-N-Nnnoooooooooo!" she screamed, and ran for the exit like a cat who'd just seen a charging pit bull. She all but tore the door off its hinges as she bolted into the hall.

For a moment Haruhi just looked at the open door, blinking. "What's the matter with her?"

I leaned against the desk. "Maybe she's still upset about some of those things you did which you insist never happened."

"Come again? Did you screw your head on the wrong way this morning, Kyon? ...Oh, I get it. You're still mad about that little lover's tiff we had last night."

_"Lover's tiff"? Well, _someone_ definitely screwed their head on the wrong way._

"But you know the silver lining to having a fight with someone you care about?" She put her elbow on the desk, leaned in close to me, and said in a low voice, "You get to kiss and... _make up_... afterwards."

A deep nausea assaulted me. _One virgin propositioning another for makeup sex. What fresh madness is this?_

My horror at Haruhi coming on to me must have momentarily shut down my brain, because I gave her a more frank response than I'd ordinarily have risked in our current situation: "I'd sooner kiss Mr. Koizumi's stubble."

"Hey, I'd pay to see that kind of boy-on-boy action. And speaking of whom..." She turned towards the cubicles. "Hey, Herbert! How do you feel about putting on this dress and mask so you and me can solve this case together?"

Koizumi stood up and cast a glance at me that I couldn't make sense of. It was like he was trying to send me a silent signal. Then he put on his Herbert guise and answered, "I'm... truly honored by the offer, Ms. Addison, but I'm afraid I'm a bit too manly to effectively impersonate a woman. My voice, especially, would be a dead giveaway. I just don't know how to disguise it."

"You're a manlier man than Kyon will ever be, Herbert – there's no denying that."

_Uncalled for. Probably true, but uncalled for._ "And that leaves you with no employees qualified to do field investigating, except yourself," I pointed out.

"Yeah... well..." She pushed her sunglasses back up on her nose. "Believe it or not, I've been doing my own dirty work since long before you came along. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

She took the dress and veil and went into her office.

I mustered the courage to go in after her. If nothing else, I needed to keep tabs on what her exact plan was if we were going to make sure Nagato didn't get killed. But before I could make a move, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was Koizumi, looking at me with unusual sternness. "What in the world did you do to her?"

"I didn't do anything. She just couldn't take any more of Haruhi's enforced costume changes. She was telling me that just a moment ago."

"I'm not talking about Miss Asahina. Our brigade chief hasn't been so obviously upset since we came to this pocket realm."

Now he had my attention. "You mean there's been closed space?"

"Well, no. But that ostentatious display just now..."

"What about it? She seemed pretty upbeat to me." The truth was, her behavior did make me feel very uncomfortable, and not just because of the "kiss and make up" line. I just couldn't put my finger on why.

"Going by what you've told me of her behavior within this pocket realm, and my own more limited observations, the better her mood, the more she acts like her usual self, and the worse her mood, the more she acts like David Addison." He leaned in close enough to make me cringe at his breath. "That was certainly not the Haruhi Suzumiya I know just now."

"You're oversimplifying her behavior. She probably has lots of reasons for changing back and forth between personas." I'll admit, though, I had the sinking feeling that there was _some_ truth to the generalization. "Besides, can you be sure she was playing Addison just now? Haruhi and Addison seem to have a lot in common. They're both lunatics, for starters."

He gave a light chuckle. "Kyon, she just announced that the two of you had a lover's tiff and said she would like to see some 'boy-on-boy action'. The Haruhi Suzumiya we know would never say such things, even as a joke."

And thank whatever God there is that it was a joke. If I thought for one moment that she was serious about kissing and making up, I'd have been a lot worse than nauseous. The idea of sex with Haruhi was daunting even under normal circumstances; the idea of having sex in this role-playing universe with a Haruhi who wears sunglasses and calls me "Kyon baby" would easily top my worst nightmares.

"Now if you please, tell me what it is you did to upset Miss Suzumiya so much that she's retreating into the role of a fictional character. You wouldn't be making such an effort to dodge the question if you didn't know what the problem is."

I scarcely took in what Koizumi said. My ears were perked up. "Do you hear that?"

He chuckled. "You do know that that trick is older -"

"Shh." I held a finger up. The sound was getting louder, making it possible to discern. "It sounds like... a woman screaming."

Koizumi was silent a moment, then said, "My apologies. I hear it too now. ...Oh, no."

"What?"

"We forgot to tell Miss Asahina about the void outside the elevator doors."

We stared at each other a moment.

We bolted to the hall, Koizumi reaching the door first thanks to his longer legs (I will never accept that he might have been more motivated to rush to Miss Asahina's aid than I was). No sooner had we got out than Miss Asahina came out of the elevator with her head ducked down, as if she were running through a battlefield. She was screaming loud enough for six damsels in distress.

"Miss Asahina!" Koizumi didn't so much shout her name as say it so sharply and so... passionately... that you couldn't help but take notice.

Miss Asahina certainly did. "Her... Her... Herbert?" she managed, peering up at him. "Oh, thank God!"

"You're all right now, Agnes." He moved forward and put an arm around her shoulder. "I promise you, nothing -"

"Can we all please be ourselves right now?" I cut in loudly. "We don't have time for this."

The two of them broke apart from each other, both blushing with what I dearly hoped was consternation and not some romantic cliche.

"Wh-what..." Miss Asahina mumbled. "What in the world was that? Outside the elevator, i-it..."

"Don't worry. It's just... um... a big void, uh, that's there because... uh..." I looked to Koizumi. "You explain it."

He smiled gently at her. "Since this is a simulation of a television show, Miss Suzumiya has not created any areas where scenes do not take place."

"Oh! I should have guessed." She smiled sheepishly.

_That's right, you two keep on making me feel like the doofus in the room._

"B-but..." Her distress was resurfacing. "That means there's no escape. I can't leave the building, and Miss Suzumiya is going to make me change outfits again. There's no escape!"

"Calm down," I said. "Miss Suzumiya isn't going to make you do anything. As soon as you left, she moved on to asking Koizumi to put on the dress."

She looked surprised. "Koizumi, you're going to wear it?"

"No, I -"

"Then she'll just come back around to making me wear it!" Tears were brimming in her eyes.

"Okay." I wearily rubbed my face. "We'll all go into Haruhi's office together, and tell her straight out that if she wants to use that disguise, she's going to have to wear it herself. Okay?"

Miss Asahina let out a little wail. Koizumi frowned and said, "I don't think opposing Miss Suzumiya's will, especially in her current fragile state of mind, is advisable."

"Look, I'm supposedly the boss at the SOS Detective Agency, aren't I? All of you are my employees. That means if I say you don't have to wear a dress for this case, you don't. Now come on."

I headed back inside the agency before either of them could voice any more sniveling objections. _Alright, I'__m__ an insensitive jerk for saying that, but damn does their kowtowing to Haruhi get on my nerves sometimes. She just came into the office with sunglasses and playing old time rock and roll for no reason. How can they even take her seriously?_

At least they had the nerve to follow me as I strode towards Haruhi's office. I knocked, partly out of habit, partly because it had occurred to me that, having gone in there with the dress and mask, she might be changing.

There was no answer.

"Haruhi," I called, and knocked more loudly.

Still no answer. Well, if she were changing, I'd expect her to be doing it in her private bathroom anyway, not in the main room of her office. I opened the door.

No one was inside. "Haruhi?"

While Koizumi and Miss Asahina looked around the room, I went directly to her bathroom. But the door was open, and there was no sign of Haruhi. I checked in the closet, even in the cabinet under the sink, but nothing.

I returned to the main room. "She must have gone out a window."

Koizumi shook his head. "The windows are all locked from the inside, and need I remind you that this office is a half dozen stories up?"

"Then she must have slipped past us while we were talking."

"When? Miss Asahina would surely have noticed if Miss Suzumiya came after her, at least until she was distracted by the void outside the elevator. And after that, we were lingering in one spot in the hall. I think you'll agree that the idea of her somehow going around the three of us unnoticed in that narrow hall is ludicrous."

"Alright," I scowled. "What are you getting at?"

Koizumi didn't smile, but he looked indefinably pleased at my question. Like an exhibitor, he came to stand in the center of the room and held out his hands in a gesture of presentation. "Miss Suzumiya, it seems, has vanished into thin air."


	16. Costume Ball

\- Chapter 16: Costume Ball -

I clenched both my fists as hard as my muscles would allow. "You've got ten seconds to give me a straight answer."

Koizumi chuckled. "I apologize. As serious as the situation is, I couldn't help but be caught up in what a classic locked room mystery it is. I'm not sure what happened here, but the most logical answer is that Miss Suzumiya, after changing into her dress and mask, jumped scenes from her office directly to the hotel where the Wylies are staying."

"I thought she had to reach the elevator first to scene jump."

"Oh, no. When did I ever say that? Remember, this is a simulation of a television show. Just because a set exists for a location doesn't mean the show covers everything that happens in that location. After all, what point would there be in showing Miss Suzumiya walking across the room and down the hall on the way to her destination?"

"But it wouldn't have just been her walking," I protested. "We were already having a scene there!"

"You are quite correct. Ordinarily, under these circumstances, I would expect that we would have indeed seen Miss Suzumiya. Especially since, had we spotted her, we would have stopped her to discuss things, thereby creating a scene. The best explanation I can see is that Miss Suzumiya chose to skip over whatever might happen to her between stepping out of this room and arriving at the hotel."

Miss Asahina put a finger to her lower lip. "Why would she do that?"

Like a compass aligning itself, Koizumi turned directly towards me.

I frowned. "What?"

"You still haven't answered. What did you do to Miss Suzumiya to make her act this way?"

"Nothing! We just had an ordinary garden variety argument, that's all!" It pissed me off that he was digging into our personal drama now of all times. "Now come on, we've got to get to Nagato's hotel before she does!"

Koizumi shook his head. "Time does not exist in the real world sense here. So long as we do the right scene jump, we'll arrive in time no matter how long we spend in conversation. Therefore there is no need to hurry, and no excuse that will get you out of giving an explanation. Our chances of preventing Miss Suzumiya from putting an end to Miss Nagato are much greater if we understand her state of mind."

"I'm the only one who needs to understand Haruhi's state of mind. In fact..." I stared Koizumi down. "...I'm the only one who needs to do anything at all. The only way to follow Haruhi is disguised as Barbara Wylie, since she's the only person at the hotel who wears a mask. It's a one man job."

"Oh?" Koizumi smiled. "If I followed your earlier conversation correctly, refusing to wear that dress and mask is what led to your argument with Miss Suzumiya to begin with. And now -"

"Yes, now I'm once again doing exactly what Haruhi wants me to," I sighed. "Go ahead, poke fun at me."

"I wouldn't dream of it, seeing as I don't have a better plan. However, I still must insist that you bring me along for backup. I can wait outside the hotel, and come to your assistance if things go wrong. I can also help you shop for the dress and mask."

I grimaced. "I'd rather have Miss Asahina to help with that."

"Of course!" She smiled. "We'll both come along."

_Not exactly what I wa__s asking for._

_ But I guess it makes sense. Even if only one of us can infiltrate the hotel, it won't hurt to take as many people as possible. You never know what might happen._

* * *

Shopping for and putting on the dress was a blur. Either we were scene jumping, or my brain was right on top of blocking traumatic memories. If it's the latter, then I implore an explanation for why the image of Nagato with a mustache saying "Because I am a man" still frequently cycles through my head.

Anyway, it didn't make it less than mortifying to be wearing the dress. Mercifully, we'd at least dispensed with the bra filled with tissue paper; I convinced Koizumi that simply fluffing up the front of the blouse would look good enough. Besides, who was going to say, "Hey, you're not Barbara Wylie. Your breasts are different!"? For that matter, who was going to be blind enough to not realize I'm over a head taller than her? That's the argument I used to persuade Koizumi that it would be pointless for me to wear a wig.

It didn't work. "Remember, we're not in the real world, so people do not necessarily follow the same logic. The most absurd disguise in the world can fool people, if the writers of a television show put it into the plot. Miss Suzumiya wrote the script, so if she wanted for you to infiltrate the hotel dressed as Barbara Wylie, then dressing as Barbara Wylie will work, regardless of your obviously differing physical proportions. By the same token, not following her instructions for your disguise runs the risk of your being discovered."

After hearing that, I decided not to tell him that she had specifically mentioned getting a bra for me.

The wig wasn't that bad, actually. I had to fight down the urge to scratch my head now and then, but it didn't feel girlish so long as I didn't think about it too much. I could pretend I was wearing a normal man's wig to cover up a bad haircut.

It was the high heels which were the worst. Even the skirt, I could imagine was a pair of shorts if I just kept my eyes straight ahead. But the high heels? There was no ignoring those. The forced ankle bending felt like I was being tortured in a rack, and I struggled to keep my balance with every step. Why anyone would choose to wear these things is beyond my power to guess.

Somehow I made it to the front desk without falling on my face. I took a breath, and recalled what Barbara Wylie's voice sounded like: raspy, breathy, and of course, feminine. "May I have my room key, please?" I asked the desk clerk.

The words came out sounding like a cross between an asthmatic rat and, well, a guy trying to sound like a woman. It would have been laughable if there weren't lives at stake. Sweat formed on my brow.

The clerk turned away, took a key off one of the hooks, and handed it to me. "There you are," he smiled.

"...Thank you." It looked like Koizumi's hunch was right; Haruhi had set this up so that I couldn't fail. At least, not as long as I was dressed like a woman. Talk about coercion.

Then again, I reflected as I headed up to the Wylies' room, Haruhi didn't seem to be around to laugh at me in my attire. I'd at least deprived her of that pleasure. With luck, I might even be able to grab some of Nagato's male clothing and find a convenient place to change before Haruhi showed.

_Wait a second. With luck? This is a simulation of a television show. There is no luck involved. Just Haruhi's will._

_ Well, her will isn't going to win out this time. If coming here on her own was her plan all along, then nothing can happen to Nagato until I've had a chance to intervene, because Haruhi doesn't do solo adventures. If, on the other hand, that fight I had with her really threw her off, then she's not going to be in any shape to kill Nagato. __I hope._

I reached room 413. I knocked. No one answered, so I used the key and slipped inside.

_Okay. If I'm going to get Haruhi off Nagato's case, I still need to find the key to Nagato's other hotel room. Now where would..._

My eyes fell upon a framed photo. I picked it up to stare at it, a dark pit welling up in my stomach. Because in that photo was Nagato, wearing a tuxedo, holding the hands of a woman in a white gown with the veil completely hiding her face.

_ Nagato's wedding day. Now I really am traumatized for life._

_ ...Whoa, hold on. Th__is__ can't be a photo of something that really happened. Nagato said she hadn't even tried urinating since coming to this world, which means she hasn't even been here since the beginning of this "episode", never mind -_

A key rattled in the door.

I slapped the photo back down on the table and ran to the only reasonable place to hide: The closet. It was one of those small closets, enclosed by a single door with a regular doorknob and a large wooden vent. So you can imagine how I felt when, after diving in and closing the door behind me, I found that I had to share that small space with another person wearing a black dress and veil.

"What are you doing in here?" I demanded of Haruhi in a hissed whisper.

"What am _I_ doing in here? What are _you_ doing in here?" she retorted. "And why do you look so much better in that outfit than I do?"

"Very funny. Okay, you win, I'm following your stupid plan, so you can go home now."

"Not until you tell me what you're doing in here!"

"Huh? Oh, I heard -" I suddenly remembered what was going on. Key rattling in the door. One of the Wylies was back.

I clapped a hand over Haruhi's mouth before she could continue questioning or arguing with me. In response, her eyes burned with outrage, and she clapped a hand over _my_ mouth. Well, whatever. So long as we both kept quiet. If we were lucky, whoever it was would leave shortly.

I was just reminding myself again that there was no such thing as luck here when the closet door opened. And there, holding the doorknob, was _another_ person in a black dress and veil.

Haruhi and I stumbled out of the cramped closet. "What's the matter?" she quipped at the third visitor to the room. "Never seen a man come out of the closet?"

_Damn it. Do you have a whole list of jokes prepared for my wearing this damn dress? I swear I'll be grateful when we get back to the real world and I only have to deal with good old humorless Haruhi, not "Haruhi Addison"._

"Now, hear us out, Mrs. Wylie," Haruhi continued in a more sober voice as the third figure in the room just stared at her with liquid mercury eyes. "You're being framed for the murder of Frank -"

"Haruhi," I interrupted. "That isn't Barbara Wylie."

"Huh?"

_Seriously, how am I the only person who recognizes those eyes? You couldn't ask for more distinctive eyes than Nagato's._

More than incredulity, though, I felt relief. We were here, all together, so we could resolve this thing peacefully. Maybe that's the way Haruhi scripted it. Even if it wasn't, that was what was happening. The threat was past.

"It's over, Mr. Wylie," I said, hoping this would be the last time I'd have to address Nagato with a male honorific. "We know all about how you killed Frank Harbert and tried to frame your wife."

"I see." She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun, aiming it at me and Haruhi. "You leave me no choice, then."

Haruhi let out an exaggerated yelp and threw her hands into the air. I stared in disbelief. "Nagato, what are you doing?"

"Following Ms. Suzumiya's script." She held the gun inhumanly steady. "After I kill you two, I'll conspicuously flee the hotel, still dressed as my wife. There will be no eyewitnesses to say that Yuki Wylie was ever here. Everyone will conclude that my wife killed Harbert for revenge, then killed you two after you found evidence of her crime."

"Why?" Haruhi demanded. "Killing Harbert I can understand, but why frame your wife?"

"Don't you see? What jury would convict a woman for killing the man who burned her face off?"

This seems like a good time to comment on how bizarre the American legal system is, but actually, I don't think a judge would convict her, either. At the least, he'd give her a light sentence. Besides, I had more important things to worry about.

"Okay, Nagato, the play's over." I approached her calmly. "You're not going to shoot us, and we both know it."

"I will, if you take another step."

I froze. She was serious.

"Nagato?" Haruhi said. "There's that name again. Why are you calling him that?"

I ignored her. "Nagato, listen to me. There's no need to do this. I talked with Haruhi, and she says she wants to bring you to justice. She doesn't want you dead."

Nagato didn't waver. "What Haruhi Addison wants may not be what the script's author wants. I wish to receive her judgment."

This was insane. I firmly believed that Haruhi wouldn't wish anyone to die, and I firmly believed that the last thing Nagato would want was to kill me or Haruhi, but fooling around with guns wasn't helping the life expectancy of anyone in this room. "Put the gun down, Nagato."

"Not until you are both dead."

This was a TV show, all right. If this were real life, Yuki Wylie would have shot us as soon as he drew his gun, not stood around explaining his plan and talking about how he was going to shoot us.

Haruhi, hands still in the air, drew a trembling breath. "I swear, if you hurt him, I'll -"

"Greet him when he steps through the pearly gates, that's what you'll do." She aimed the gun directly at Haruhi's head. "Ladies first."

Like I said, I firmly believed Nagato wouldn't kill Haruhi. Besides the possibility that Haruhi's death would mean the end of all existence, Nagato was emphatically following the script, and we'd already determined from the Everett episode that Haruhi wouldn't script her own death. But something about her pointing a gun at Haruhi made me snap.

"Drop the gun, Nagato!" I lunged at her, and grabbed hold of the gun by the top of the barrel. I half-expected her to just let me take it, but she actually started struggling with me. I'm not really clear on whether Nagato has alien super-strength or just the expected strength of a petite teenage girl, but she wasn't demonstrating either of those. Instead, we were evenly matched. I was determined to get that gun, though.

Then I heard a loud bang. We're talking deafeningly loud. And there was a sudden, overwhelming pain in my side.

I fell to my knees, clutching at the moist dark red spot forming on my dress. I heard Haruhi scream my name. I felt her hands grab me, as if she was trying to pull me up out of bed. She was shaking, and her face had gone pale. I wanted to tell her to leave me alone. Hadn't I done enough for her already?

Nagato's voice cut through the haze. "All right then. Since you volunteer..."

I looked up and saw he... no, _she_ had the gun pointed straight at my head. This was insane. Nagato couldn't mean to actually kill me. Could she?

"Yaaaaah!" Haruhi delivered a spinning kick to Nagato's wrist that knocked the gun from her hand. It clattered across the floor towards the closet, out of reach. Nagato retreated a step, but she kept an eye on the gun. With Haruhi no longer holding me up, I slumped to the floor. The momentary fog had cleared from my mind, but I couldn't summon the will to overcome the pain and get up.

Like a football player, Haruhi took two quick steps towards the gun and kicked it all the way into the closet. Then she was back at my side, gripping my arm rather painfully. "Come on, Kyon, stay with me!"

I groaned. "I'm fine, just let -"

"Ms. Addison!" Koizumi had arrived in the doorway. "I heard a gunshot, and – Oof!"

Nagato shoved Koizumi aside and darted down the hall, making her escape. Haruhi released me and went after her. "Look after Kyon!" she ordered Koizumi.

"Ms. Addison, wait!" He caught her by the shoulder. "It's too dangerous!"

"Let me go!" She shoved him against the door frame, hard, and dashed into the hall. "He hurt Kyon! He's going to pay!"

As Koizumi recovered himself and helped me to my feet, those words rang in my head. _He hurt Kyon. He's going to pay._ So I'd been wrong? This whole thing was an allegory for Nagato putting me in that coma, and Haruhi was mad enough about that to...

"Koizumi," I gasped out. "You've got to stop her."

"I am as concerned for Miss Nagato as you are," he said. "But your safety must come first. You've been shot."

"This? This is..." I looked at my wound. It didn't seem to be part of me. It was more like something I was watching on... _A TV show. That's it._ "This..." I staggered to my feet, and pushed Koizumi off me. "This isn't... even real."

"You've misunderstood." His words were calm, but his voice was alarmed. "This pocket realm is a simulation of a television show, but from our perspective, it's real. We can die here the same as we can in the real world."

"A TV show world runs by TV show rules." I concentrated on the hallway, on what was ahead of me. I put all my mental effort into ignoring the bullet in my side. "And in TV shows... heroes can get shot a dozen times and still go into action."

I kicked off my high heels and took off running, trying not to think about the fact that in the real world, doing that with a fresh bullet wound would be sheer idiocy. For Nagato's sake, I had to do this.

As I turned a corner at top speed, my wig went flying off my head, and I caught sight of Haruhi. I didn't waste my breath calling after her, because she was going at a full, focused sprint, making this my one and only chance of catching her. What was I saying? I had _no_ chance of outrunning an Olympian like Haruhi, even if my feet weren't stiff and sore from those damn high heels. My only hope was that I could keep up until she caught Nagato.

"You can't escape!" Haruhi cried as she rounded another corner. She sounded as though she was enjoying herself. But you know, while I felt a twinge of bitterness that she wasn't more broken up about having left me kneeling on the floor and bleeding out, I could understand that. Racing in hot pursuit of a dangerous criminal who we'd just exposed – if I weren't wearing women's clothes, and concerned that one of my best friends was about to kill another of my best friends, I'd probably be having fun, too.

When I rounded that next corner, I caught sight of Nagato, too. She had reached the point where the hallway opened up, branching out into a square shape, with the interior bounded by a glass railing that overlooked the hotel's ground floor. There was a yellow sign cautioning "wet floor", but Nagato couldn't slow down without Haruhi catching her.

If I were watching what followed on TV, I'd have plenty of witty remarks to make about the physics. But since we were all actually living in this TV world, mockery would have been hollow. One of Nagato's feet slipped on the slick floor, but instead of falling on her back as you'd expect a person to do in the real world, she went about five feet into the air. And instead of falling straight back down, she descended at a slight angle, so that she hit the railing and ended up on the side of it which went four stories down. She reached out blindly, desperately, and caught hold of the top of the railing. Her grip held, and there she hung, suspended over a deadly height.

It was your classic contrived cliffhanger.

Haruhi slowed to a walk as she reached the wet floor. "Well, well, how the tables have turned." It _was_ Haruhi who said that. But if you think that doesn't sound like her, well, you're not alone.

I saw Nagato's face through the glass railing. Her mustache was still a horrifying thing to behold, but even that was nothing compared to what I saw in her eyes: Fear. Real fear. Nagato had chosen to accept whatever punishment Haruhi chose for her, but acceptance did not make the prospect of death any less terrifying.

I'd made a gross oversight. Haruhi wouldn't wish for anyone to die, but what about David Addison? Didn't Nagato say he was cynical, or something? Could he be the sort of person who might kill someone out of a deep anger? I should have asked her for more information about the character, because like Koizumi said, Haruhi seemed to be fully in character now.

I could try tackling Haruhi, but Nagato might still fall if Haruhi Addison wished it. Besides, now that I had stopped running, I was starting to really feel that gunshot wound; I found myself leaning on the railing for support. It was better to talk to her. "Haruhi, let her – I mean, let _him_ up. If you kill him, you're no better than he is."

"Well, of course."

She grabbed Nagato's forearms and yanked her off of the railing.

"Nagato!" My scream could probably have been heard from two blocks away. But I didn't watch her fall to her death, the way it would happen in the movies. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn't want to see. The sight of Haruhi's callous action, coupled with that last look of sheer terror in Nagato's eyes, was already more than I could bear.

"How... how could you do that?" I gasped out.

"Huh? He deserved a lot worse. He tried to kill you."

I'd had it. "No, you scripted her trying to kill me! If I were dead now, it would be _your fault_!"

"Really? I guess I deserve the same, then."

"What?" I opened my eyes, and saw Haruhi had climbed onto the railing. My heart convulsed. "No! Wait!"

She didn't stop, and she didn't wait. She leaped off into the same fatal descent which had taken Nagato.

"Haruhi!" My throat was too strained from that first scream to muster nearly as much volume, and this time I didn't close my eyes. Instead, I leapt onto the railing and reached out my hand as far as my arm socket would allow. "Grab my... my..."

I wasn't fast enough. Obviously. I mean, you'd have to be the Flash or something to catch a jumper before they hit the ground.

The good news was, as my eyes were now confirming, Haruhi hadn't hit the ground. Nor had Nagato. They both had landed in a massive ball pit. Seriously, this ball pit was bigger than my bedroom, both the one at the Hayes homestead and the one back in the real world. Nagato looked bewildered and disoriented, while Haruhi was swimming through the plastic balls as easily and cheerfully as if it were the ocean.

"Hmm." I jerked my head to the right, and saw Koizumi had caught up with us. He was leaning his elbows on the railing, looking down at the girls. "A hotel seems an unusual place for a ball pit. Perhaps there are a lot of families who stay here."

_Or maybe the creator of this world, our beloved brigade chief, doesn't give two yen about realism._

He glanced up at me where I was perched on the dangerous side of the railing, and smiled. "I gather you thought Miss Suzumiya had killed Miss Nagato and was trying to commit suicide out of guilt, and felt the urge to spring to her rescue, completely regardless of your own safety?"

"Because of what I said," I answered him. "I thought she was committing suicide because of what I said to her. It would have been my fault if she died."

Koizumi looked as though he had something to say to that, but at that moment Miss Asahina arrived. "Am I too late?" she said, looking over me and Koizumi and trying to read the situation. "I'm sorry; I just couldn't find you guys until I heard Kyon screaming. I-I-Is Miss Nagato...?"

"She and Miss Suzumiya are fine," Koizumi said. He looked back to me. "Why don't you join them? I'd do so myself, but jumping from such a height is rather too much excitement for my tastes."

"Is there any need for it?" I said, but made no move to come back to the other side of the railing. "If Haruhi had any intention of killing Nagato, the ball pit wouldn't be there."

"Of course there's no need. I simply thought that it looks like fun."

"I'd like to try it," Miss Asahina chimed in, blushing slightly. She climbed up on the railing next to me. "But... it does look a bit scary. M-m-maybe... we could go together?"

She held out her hand. It trembled slightly, enough to know she had a healthy fear of jumping from such a height, but she wasn't letting it stop her. She was quite a brave girl. Her long hair cascaded over her shoulder, and her eyes shone with an invitation to shared adventure. How could I possibly say no?

Besides, I'd always wondered what it would be like to hit terminal velocity.

I took Miss Asahina's hand, relishing the look of silent disapproval this earned from Koizumi. Holding hands tightly, together we jumped off the railing.

That moment: How to describe it? I don't think even a parachutist would know exactly how it felt. Those guys know that, barring an unforeseen accident, they're going to be moving pretty slow when they actually hit the ground. For those few seconds, we felt ourselves falling faster and faster, the air whipping through our clothes, blowing up my skirt, and while ordinarily I would have been mortified at having my legs and underwear thus on public display, in that brief moment I could feel only exhilaration. (Besides, the only ones in a position to see anything were Haruhi, Nagato, and a bunch of fictional characters, and Haruhi and Nagato were too occupied with swimming through the ball pit to look up.) Miss Asahina and I, defying death together. It was like a romantic fantasy, brought to life in a world that was itself half fantasy.

Like high divers hitting the water, we were instantly submerged in colorful plastic balls. I lost my grip on Miss Asahina's hand, but it didn't really make a difference; she was bound to let go once we neared Haruhi anyway. I enjoyed the sensation of colliding with a whole pool of plastic balls at a velocity that would have seriously injured me at the very least if I were in a world where logic held sway. Then I swam up to the surface.

I spotted Nagato, doggedly swimming towards the edge of the ball pit. You could tell she'd never been in one before; she barely made any progress, and she kept dipping and bobbing back up, struggling to keep her head above the surface. Nonetheless, she ultimately reached her goal. The ball pit was enclosed by black netting, with a velcro gate at one side providing the exit. Nagato grabbed ahold of the netting to pull herself up to the gate.

"Oh no you don't!" Like a predator emerging from cover to seize its prey, Haruhi sprang up from beneath the plastic balls, grabbed Nagato by the back of her collar, and dunked her back under.

_I should go over and help poor Nagato. The two of us could team up against Haruhi._

_...Good grief, what am I saying? Nagato is still supposed to be an unrepe__n__tant murderer who we're trying to bring to justice. However it may look, we haven't gone to an amusement park._

Haruhi held Nagato down for a few seconds, then yanked her back to the surface. I don't think I'd ever seen Nagato look so confused.

"Had enough?" Haruhi gave her a little shake. "Then listen, and listen good! Nobody hurts the members of the SOS Detective Agency! Not even other members! They're my people, and I make sure that anyone who attacks them pays the price. Do you understand?"

Confusion was subtly replaced by comprehension on Nagato's face. She looked at Haruhi. "Yes. I am sorry."

"You know, I think she really means it." She was still looking at Nagato, but I got the impression that she was talking to me, like she somehow knew I had my eyes on her. "Alright, I forgive you. But we still have to hand you over to the police! That's just the way the law works."

"Kyon?" Miss Asahina had come up behind me. She sounded concerned. "You're looking at Miss Suzumiya like..."

I turned to her and smiled. "I'm proud of her, I guess." _Aagh, that sounds so horribly wrong._ "I mean... I haven't forgiven her for what she did to you on Monday, but this was a better way of dealing with what Nagato did than I would have expected from her. I would have understood if she were completely enraged at Nagato, but she just wanted to make sure it didn't happen again."

Miss Asahina nodded. "She cares about us. No matter how it seems, she cares about us."

"Yeah." I realized now that I hadn't done enough about Nagato after the world got put back to normal. I'd taken care of Nagato herself, telling the Data Integration Thought Entity that we wouldn't let her be taken away from us, but I hadn't taken care of everyone else. I hadn't done anything to ensure that Nagato wouldn't hurt us again. I'd just assumed she wouldn't, because I didn't want to accept the fact that she might. Haruhi, for a change, had to clean up after my carelessness.

"Hey, Kyon!" My eyes shot to Haruhi. "I was just saying to Yuki here that I think he might look better without the mustache. What's your opinion?"

_Thank you, thank you, thank you._ "Shave it off."

* * *

As the last hour of the work day rolled on, I stewed in my office about the fight I had with Haruhi the night before. It was strange. She'd been in a great mood when we were chasing Nagato, and she was being herself, not Addison. But after we got back to the agency, the atmosphere between us suddenly became cool, and I could feel the shadow of that now-defunct argument over who should wear the dress and veil looming over us.

...Okay, so the argument had really been about a lot more than wearing the dress. It still didn't make a whole lot of sense that we could go from having a blast together in a ball pit and discussing the removal of Nagato's disgusting mustache to not even wanting to speak to each other. It reeked of bad writing, and since Haruhi was our playwright, bad writing was probably exactly what it was.

All the same, something needed to be done about it. And Haruhi wasn't the sort of girl who came to you and apologized. She was the sort of girl who sat alone, nursing her grudge with folded arms and head lifted proudly, until you came and apologized _to her._

I sighed, got up, and went to her office.

When I opened the door, she was sitting in her chair, wheeling it around in a circle, looking bored. When she saw me, she put a foot up on her desk to stop the chair's rotation. "Hey," she said.

"Hi." Here goes. "I'm sorry about the things I said last night."

She lifted an eyebrow. "So, you didn't mean what you said?"

"Well... Not all of it, I guess. Which part were you thinking about?"

"Forget it." She kicked off of the desk, swiveling the chair so she was facing away from me. "Apology accepted," she said in a tone of dismissal.

That was Haruhi, all right – never apologizing, never even admitting that she was glad to have you back on her team. "Well, see you tomorrow," I said, and left, closing the door behind me. It was good to have that over with.


	17. Ruby Slippers

\- Chapter 17: Ruby Slippers -

A few weeks later (there was no real way to tell how much time passed between cases in this world), I came to work and got a surprise. After standing in the doorway for a few moments, taking in this strange turn of events, I walked over to the cubicle.

"Nagato," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"Work release." Her mustache had been shaved off, but her voice was still masculine, to my chagrin.

"Haruhi hired you?"

She nodded, and continued to shuffle files.

"So... That means it's all back to the way it was, doesn't it? You're part of the SOS team again."

"Yes."

_You'd think, with such a happy ending to the drama we just went through, we'd have more to talk about. But that's Nagato, and I sure don't want her to change._ "Well... If you need me, I'll be in my office."

"Wait."

I stopped.

"Before firing the gun, I determined the exact positions of all your vital organs and calculated every possible trajectory of the bullet. Baring an unexpected alteration of information by another entity, there was no chance of the bullet killing you."

"Yeah, I figured as much." I smiled at her. "Besides, if you had tried to kill me, Haruhi wouldn't have allowed it, right?" No response. Not that I needed one. "You're not still feeling guilty about any of that, are you? Haruhi forgave you."

"My interpretation of the matter differs from yours."

"Okay... What's your interpretation?"

"I am guilty." She stared at a seemingly arbitrary point in space. "That is why Haruhi Suzumiya judged me for the crime of consigning you to a coma. Her sentence was merciful, intended not to punish but to optimize the safety and happiness of the SOS Brigade members. I was made to briefly experience fear, helplessness, and confusion, to deter me from again visiting similar harm on others. Then I was ordered to serve in the SOS Detective Agency, which corresponds to the SOS Brigade in the default reality. Because of this, I shall not again wish for the Data Integration Thought Entity to remove me."

"So, you're making up for what you did now? Is that it?"

"Nothing I ever do can make up for my crime." She was still speaking in the same monotone. "But I shall not do anything like it again. Miss Suzumiya has evidently deemed that sufficient."

"If I may interrupt," Koizumi, who I only just that moment realized was now behind me, said in my ear. "Now would be an ideal time to persuade Miss Suzumiya to return us to the real world, before we are entrenched in another case. Since we are having a scene at the agency, it is likely that a new client will walk in the door at any moment."

"Yeah, okay," I sighed, and headed for Haruhi's office.

_Okay, let's try not to screw this up this time. Remember that you don't own a detective agency and that the people and things of this world aren't important to you. If Haruhi starts doing Addison, nip it in the bud and tell her to be herself. And whatever you do, don't get in an argument with her, even __if__ that seems to be what happens over half the time we have a conversation in either world. Just tell her it's not so bad back in the real world, and..._

I stopped in my tracks.

"Is something the matter?" Koizumi asked.

"...Why do we want Haruhi to send us back to the real world now?" I turned to him. "What need is there, now that Nagato is safe? You said it yourself; this place is like a vacation from the real world."

"I see." He smiled knowingly. "You've been enjoying the cases."

"Not really, but they can't be any worse than the activities Haruhi has lined up for us in the real world."

"Or facing her after that phone message you left her on Monday, hmm?"

_Damn you, Koizumi._ "I'm not just thinking of myself. Nagato and Miss Asahina haven't had a chance to really enjoy this world. Miss Asahina didn't even know who she was until the end of that last case, and Nagato was stuck in the bad guy role."

"I have enjoyed myself," Nagato said. "The mystery, and experiencing what it is like to be a man were -"

"A-a-and I know you've been enjoying having mysteries to solve," I continued, trying my best not to think about what Nagato was saying. "Don't deny it."

"I don't, of course," Koizumi shrugged. "But if Miss Suzumiya does not leave this pocket realm fairly soon, she may never do so."

"What are you talking about?"

"Hmm. You've noted that Miss Suzumiya refuses to remember things from the real world, and immerses herself in the 'Haruhi Addison' identity whenever it suits her. The longer she does those things, the more likely it is that she will genuinely forget who she is. The rest of us can deduce that this world is a fantasy created by Miss Suzumiya, but Miss Suzumiya herself is unaware of her powers, and so very logically reasons that this is the only reality, and memories of any world but this one can only be dreams."

I took a minute to mull that over. "You mean... she's beginning to think the real world is just something she imagined?"

He nodded.

"Why the hell didn't you say anything about this before?"

"I am ashamed to admit that I only recently figured it out. It took a considerable amount of time for my esper abilities to explore the interactions between this world and Miss Suzumiya's psyche."

"So I convince her now or we're trapped forever?"

"Not at all. You forget, Miss Nagato can transfer us back to the real world, though she cannot do the same for Miss Suzumiya. Besides, this isn't an exact science. It is possible that we could take another case or two, perhaps even three, without Miss Suzumiya losing all sight of her true identity. It is only that the longer we stay, the more likely we will pass the point of no return." He tilted his head oddly. "Although, it occurs to me that might not be so bad. While in this realm, Miss Suzumiya can do no damage to the real world. How do you feel about her remaining here, Miss Nagato?"

"The Data Integration Thought Entity has no objections. Moreover, I would be willing to remain here and observe her."

"As would I. As Kyon stated, the mysteries are enjoyable. Hmm. Perhaps we should bring Miss Asahina over here so that she can place her vote."

"Hold it." I put up a hand up to stop him. "You think I don't know what you're up to? You just like the idea of being in a world where you and Miss Asahina are scripted to be lovers."

His smile didn't break. "Supposing that is true, what right have you to object should Miss Asahina and I agree to it of our own free will?"

"Well..." As I struggled for an argument, I heard the phone's ringing, quickly silenced by Miss Asahina's answering. "What about Haruhi's choice? We can't tell her about her powers, or any of it, so she doesn't even get a vote. You can't tell me we have the right to decide for her that she should stay here, playing the part of a clownish private detective forever, giving up all memory of who she really is. If we were her worst enemies, we wouldn't have that right, and we're supposed to be her friends."

Koizumi's smile brightened. "It took you long enough."

"What?"

"I'm rather disappointed that you put concern for Miss Asahina first, but better late than never. Go on, convince Miss Suzumiya to -"

"Excuse me, Mr. Hayes," Miss Asahina interrupted, holding up the phone. "The police want to talk to you. Um, something about a man who did a painting of you?"

"It must be the beginning of a new case," Koizumi whispered to me. "Ignore it."

"Right," I nodded. "Ms. Asahina, tell them I'm heading out the door, or something."

"You mean... l-l-lie to the police?"

I sighed and, conscious of what the rest of the agency's employees might think of the conversation, leaned across the reception desk to whisper to her. "Miss Asahina, I'm trying to get Haruhi to take us back home before we get involved in anything else."

"Oh." Her face was crestfallen. It made my heart break to see it. "Do you have to? I'd really like to see this painting of you..."

"We have to. I promise, I'll do everything I can to prevent Haruhi from attacking you again, but we have to get back to the real world now."

She nodded, disappointed but resolute, and put the phone back to her ear. "Hello? I'm afraid Mr. Hayes has just stepped out."

_Heaven bless you, Miss Asahina._ I headed for Haruhi's office.

Then the agency's door swung open. "Excuse me," said a man in a fine-cut suit and tie. "Do you people do missing persons ca-"

His question was cut off by Koizumi's fist laying him out flat on the floor.

I gawked. Actually, the whole office gawked.

Koizumi turned to me. "Time is running out. Get in there and talk to Miss Suzumiya. Just remember, it won't do any good to talk about the real world directly; she won't acknowledge it."

"How did you do that?" I asked, still gawking. You couldn't quite call Koizumi a weakling, but knocking out a full-grown man with one punch?

"The same way you chased Miss Suzumiya down with a bullet wound. Now go."

I ran to Haruhi's office, threw open the door, and quickly closed it behind me so she wouldn't be distracted by the man lying unconscious on the floor. She was seated, legs propped up on her desk.

Well, this was it. It might amount to nothing if we took on one more case, but only a fool would take that chance. I had to put everything I had into convincing Haruhi to take us out of here. Which might well mean saying a few things that I didn't really mean, but I'd have to suck it up and do it.

"Haruhi," I said breathlessly. "We need to talk."

"I know, I know," she said. "Hiring a convict to work for a company that handles sensitive information like ours is irresponsible. And once again, I made a major decision without consulting you. But hear me out -"

"Not that. I'm glad you hired Nagato."

"Nagato?" A brow arched.

"I mean, Mr. Wylie," I amended. "Listen -"

"You keep on saying that name. Maybe it's a repressed memory trying to work its way up." She grinned. "Could be Nagato is a waitress you forgot to tip."

So, "Haruhi Addison" was back. I needed to fix that fast, and the only way I could think of to do that was to provoke an emotional reaction out of her. But what would -

_Got it._ I took the chair in front of her desk, turned it around so that it was facing away from her, and sat in it.

Her grin went to a frown. "What are you doing?"

I didn't allow myself to flinch or hesitate. "Listen, Haruhi. It's been fun, but we've had enough of taking on cases right now. Miss Asahina, Koizumi, and I want to go back to having normal lives for a while." I decided mentioning Nagato's name was an unnecessary risk.

She took her legs down off the desk. "What's the problem? Are the cases too scary? Too depressing? Too hard? Too easy?"

"There's no real problem with the cases. I mean, yes, they have been a bit scary." _One you went missing, another I thought you'd killed someone for a second._ "But that's not why they need to stop. It's... we just need a change of scene."

Whoops. Asking Haruhi for a change of scene would make her think we wanted to be taken to _another_ fictional universe and have weird adventures in a different genre. But what could I say to her to make her see that we wanted to go home, when I couldn't even mention home to her?

"Stop saying 'we'." Haruhi folded her arms. "You're the only one in here saying this, so just admit these are your feelings."

_I never said they weren't my feelings, and just because the others aren't in here with me doesn't mean I'm not conveying what they said honestly. But fine. You're in control, as usual._

"So, 'a change of scene'? I get it. You're bored." She shook her head. "We've barely started this agency and you're already bored. What is it with you? Is there anything that can hold your attention for more than a couple weeks?"

"I'm not bored. It's just that this whole place isn't right for us. And when I say us, I mean you too. We belong back where we were."

"So you want to just shut the whole agency down and dissolve our partnership." Her voice was cold, and I thought I even detected some bitterness. But it could have been my imagination. "That's it, just goodbye and have a nice life. Because it's not just the cases you're bored of, is it? It's me."

"I just told you, I'm not..." _...bored._ I stopped myself. _Bored. That's it, isn't it? That's why we're here._

My memory fished out a whole netful of things Haruhi had said since we'd come to this world. _"I could tell you were bored, Kyon..." __"Because you've gotten sick of me, right?" __"You're the one who always needs to be entertained."_

And I remembered what I'd said to her when we were arguing about my wearing the dress, wig, and veil – the words that, if Koizumi was right, had prompted her to retreat into the Addison persona. _"I got bored of you and your stupid routine months ago."_

We were here because Haruhi wanted to give me some excitement. Not for selfless reasons, of course, but for fear that I was going to leave the SOS Brigade out of loss of interest. Which would leave the SOS Brigade without its designated manual laborer and what passed for comic relief in our outfit.

"I get it," she continued. "We've been partners for a few months now, and a boy's got to spread his margarine."

_What in the world is that even supposed to mean?_ "Haruhi, listen. I'm not -"

"Well, I won't let you!" She jumped up from her seat, slamming her palms down on her desk. "I'm going to find something you enjoy doing with me and will never get bored of, and I don't care how long it takes!"

_Wait a second. It can't be just boredom that's the issue here. That fight we had on Monday has to have something to do with it, and not even Haruhi is dumb enough to think I was yelling at her because I was _bored_._

_ So it's both things, maybe? She thought I couldn't forgive her for what she did to Miss Asahina, and since I was getting bored of things anyway, that would make me leave the SOS Brigade. So here we are, in a world where she thought I'd be perpetually entertained and where none of the things that would make me want to leave the SOS Brigade ever happened. And while she's at it, she teaches Nagato a lesson._

Haruhi abruptly eased her assault, leaning across the desk to gaze up at me. "How about we try out a bet? You know, like maybe you bet that I can't act ladylike and mature for a whole week?"

"I've got a better one. I bet you can't shut up and listen to me for five minutes."

"Hnnh?" She blinked at me, unsure what to make of this. "Well... Yeah, okay. And when you lose, you have to wear a chicken suit for a whole day."

I resisted the urge to dictate what she would have to do if I won. I was counting on losing the bet, after all. Besides, this situation was my fault, too. Haruhi had been stupid enough to think I might leave the SOS Brigade, and I'd been stupid enough to say things that would support her belief. Some were things I'd gladly say again, but others were just idiotic. For instance: _"Were we partners when you decided to 'punish' Miss Asahina when you thought I'd be away from the clubroom? Were we partners when I was trying to have a serious talk with you about it and you hung up on me? Were we partners when you dragged us all to this insane universe so that you wouldn't have to deal with me? Were we partners when you decided to make Nagato the villain in your little play here?"_

I asked of my past self, _Were we partners when we were in the mountain mansion and she agreed to your plan to keep Nagato from having to leave? Were we partners when we solved the remote island mystery together? Were we partners when she took my advice to invite Takuma and Nagato back into the band? Were we partners when you suggested we forfeit the baseball game and she said, "__If it's okay with you, I guess that's fine__"?_

It wasn't a perfect partnership. Certainly Haruhi hadn't always acted like a partner. In another, larger sense, she was my boss. But none of that was any justification for denying that the partnership existed. On the day I restored the universe to how it was before Nagato altered it, I realized two things. One was that I had chosen to have adventures with aliens, espers, and time travelers. The other was that I had chosen to work with Haruhi. Because even a world where everything was ordinary, pedestrian, and dull, where the search for aliens, espers, and time travelers would always be in vain, was immeasurably brighter with her in it. Before I found her, that world was nothing but a nightmare. Once I'd found her, it still wasn't the world I chose, but it was a world I could have been reasonably content in.

What's more, if I hadn't found her, I'd never even have come close to escaping that world. What I'd said to Koizumi in the nursing home was nearer to the truth than I'd like: I was useless without her.

And she was hopeless without me.

"Haruhi," I said. "It's not you. I'm not bored of you. You _can't_ get bored of a person. You can get used to having someone around, to the point where you take them for granted, but you can't get bored of them."

"What's the difference? You want to break off our partnership either way!"

"No, I don't. I already said, it's not you. I'm just tired of the cases for now." I laid a hand on hers, hoping that would quiet her. This was hard enough without her interrupting. "That doesn't change our relationship. You said it yourself: We're partners, now and forever. It doesn't matter if we're private detectives, or lawyers, or astronauts, or occult investigators, or even just ordinary high school students. Whatever we do, whatever world we're in, we'll always be partners."

For a moment she was speechless. Then: "'Whatever world we're in'? That's the looniest thing I've heard all month." She grinned. "I like it."

I felt a moment of relief. That was a real, Haruhi grin. Not a sarcastic grin, not an evil grin, and above all not an Addison grin. That didn't mean she was ready to bring us back – she'd been happy in this world before – but it was a start. If we were lucky, it meant she believed me when I said I wasn't going to leave.

* * *

Then I was lying in my bed.

In _my_ bed. Not Hayes' bed. It was easy to tell, because the sheets were coarser but more comforting, though still insufficient against the January chill.

A year ago, this turn of events would have led me to suspect the whole thing had been a dream. Or at least _wish_ the whole thing had been a dream. I mean, I'd just told Haruhi that we were partners for all eternity. It's not like I had a choice if I wanted to get back to the real world, or that Haruhi was going to remember what I'd said, but still. Mortifying in the extreme.

It was still the middle of the night, and I hadn't gotten half the sleep I needed to be functional. Which wasn't to say that I had any hope of getting back to sleep now. I rolled over, and my eye fell upon my phone.

Waking from one nightmare back into another. My embarrassing voice mail was still on Haruhi's phone. Maybe if I called her now, I could talk her into deleting it without listening to it.

I got out of bed with a groan. My eyes were cracked open just barely enough to see my way. I walked over to my phone, picked it up, and sat back down on my bed. I stared at it dully for a few moments, then tapped my way to Haruhi's entry in my contacts list. And proceeded to stare dully at that, too.

Who was I kidding? I could already hear Haruhi's voice: _"Do you have any idea what time it is, idiot?!"_ To have as much energy as Haruhi does, she must get some incredibly blissful sleep, and wouldn't take well to being woken from it for anything less than a close encounter. Even if she gave me a chance to explain why I was calling, asking about the message would probably make her all the more eager to hear it. And even that was assuming she hadn't listened to it already.

I started when the phone rang, and almost pushed the button to ignore the call, certain it had to be Haruhi. Fortunately, my natural self-possession prevailed, and I realized the caller ID said Itsuki Koizumi.

I answered it. "Hello?"

"Hello. I just thought you might want some reassurance that it really was the rest of the SOS Brigade with you in that pocket realm, not alternate universe versions or simulacrums created by one of our enemies to test you."

"...What?" I was much too tired to process any of what he'd just said.

"Well, I suppose I also wanted to thank you. If I understand the situation correctly, our being taken to that pocket realm was due to your feuding, and I found it a nice change of pace. Of course, I also have you to thank for bringing us back safely."

"Uh. You're welcome."

"This whole adventure presents some interesting possibilities, doesn't it? Imagine what could happen if we one day can reveal Miss Suzumiya's powers to her without causing the world's destruction. She could take us on vacations to any fictional realm we desire, from _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ to the Kushinada legend. What species of Pokemon do you suppose she might cast you as?"

"Don't ask me." I yawned. "I don't watch that kiddie garbage."

"Well, it's something to contemplate – what character would Miss Suzumiya see you as in any given story. Also, it will be interesting to see if that 'partners' vow has some impact on Miss Suzumiya's behavior in the real world. Perhaps there's a promotion in your future?"

_Partners vow? Wait a second._ "You were listening in on us, weren't you?"

"It's part of my character," he said in an impish voice. "Herbert Koizumi always eavesdrops on Hayes and Addison's conversations."

"You'd better not show up at the meeting tomorrow, unless you like being punched."

"What's there to be upset about? Didn't you only say those things to persuade her to bring us back to the real world?"

"That's not the point."

"Then you must be upset on Miss Suzumiya's behalf. I understand. I apologize, and bid you goodnight."

Even with the jolt of anger, I was too tired to come up with a retort before he hung up.

I climbed back into bed and fell asleep pondering whether Haruhi was more likely to put me in the role of Cloud Strife or Red XIII. Koizumi would be Reeve, of course, and Miss Asahina would be the perfect Tifa...


	18. Epilogue: More

\- Epilogue: More -

"Hey hey! Kyon!"

I had only just stepped into the hallway where my classroom was when I was greeted by this excited hail. I stood and waited while this person, who I barely knew, really, came running down the hall towards me, waving her hand like a crossing guard who'd drunk too much caffeine.

"Hey," I greeted her.

Tsuruya stood up on tiptoes towards me. "You were in my dreams last night!"

And just like that, things were awkward. I gulped, praying that Haruhi wouldn't spot us. "Is... Is that so?"

"And Mikuru was there. Haru-nyan too! She was my sister! You and her ran a detective agency together! Neat, huh?"

_Oh no. Oh no, no, no. This can't be._

"I was trying all these get-rich-quick schemes, when I found hundreds of thousands of American dollars in the trunk of my car. I got mega-excited about it. Isn't that weird? Me, worried about money!"

She cracked up at that, but I didn't see any humor in this situation. Ordinarily, I might have written off the detective agency connection as a coincidence, or supposed that Haruhi had told Tsuruya about _Moonlighting_. But Tsuruya's story had jogged a memory. It was foggy, almost as dim as a dream, but I remembered Tsuruya Addison. I had flashes of her in a catfight with Haruhi Addison, and me yelling at them to stop.

Which meant Koizumi and I had made a wrong assumption right from the beginning. We had assumed that the episode in which we realized who we really were was the first one that Haruhi had made us live through, and that everything that came before was just backstory implanted in our memories. But the episode where I met Tsuruya Addison came before the Everett case.

Who knew what sorts of things Haruhi had made me do while I still believed myself to be "Kyon Hayes"? And what about Miss Asahina making out with Koizumi on her desk? Had that been something they'd actually lived through?

Tsuruya finally got her laughter under control. "Anyway, after I found the money, I flew out to where you, Mikuru, and Haruhi lived, and bought a bunch of fancy clothes and things to impress Haru-nyan. Now, this is the mega-weird part." She dropped to a whisper. "When I met you, I thought you were incredibly attractive, and I started romancing you! We did lots of slow dancing and everything. I even checked with Haru-nyan that you and her weren't a couple! What a weird dream to have, huh?" She leaned so close that our noses almost touched. "Do you think it means anything?"

_It means I have less than 12 hours to live if Haruhi remembers everything that happened in that pocket realm._ "I... Uh... I'm sure it, uh... was just..."

Tsuruya burst out laughing again. "Nya ha ha ha! The look on your face! Phbbbttt! You actually thought I was taking that dream seriously?"

My face went even redder. _Of course. How could a manically happy girl like Tsuruya be attracted to a depressingly sane guy like me? That's something that could only happen in a simulation crafted by a lunatic like Haruhi._

"That is what happened in the dream, though," she said. "A lot of other stuff happened, too. Most of it's a blur! Okay, I'll let you get to class!"

"Wait a sec!" She froze, and I forced myself to calm down. "Could you do me a favor? Don't tell Haruhi about that dream."

"Hah? Why not?"

Because if Haruhi remembers that same "dream", she's never going to believe that's a coincidence. But I couldn't tell Tsuruya that, of course. "She'd read too much into it," I answered her. "She takes dreams really seriously. If she hears about that one, there's a good chance she'll make the SOS Brigade start going around breaking into people's trunks in search of cash."

"Hmm, yeah, that's a good point. Okay, mum's the word! Tell Haru-nyan I said hi!"

Right. With the mini-nightmare of learning that Tsuruya and I had engaged in courtship during our stay in the pocket realm past, I now had to face the mega-nightmare of confronting Haruhi in the wake of Monday's fight. "Monday" - that's what I kept calling it, but it was yesterday. Just as Koizumi said, no time had passed in the real world while we were in the _Moonlighting_ world. The argument between us felt like half a lifetime ago, but to Haruhi it had only just happened.

I walked, step by heavy step, to classroom 1-5. Half of me hoped she was skipping class. _All_ of me feared she was – feared having the threat of this encounter looming over me for a whole 'nother day, feared the reasons why she might skip class.

But I poked my head into the doorway and saw her sitting there, as always.

She was looking out the window, so I approached my desk as quietly as I could, hoping to avoid her seeing me coming. I don't know why.

"Hey," I said, and sat down. Like I was pretending this was just another day.

"Hey." She didn't turn her gaze away from the window.

It was strange. Now that I was there, in that seat, I was still afraid, because you never knew how Haruhi might deal with a situation, but I was no longer hesitating. "So, I left you a voicemail yesterday..."

"Oh, yeah," she cut me off. "What was that, anyway? Just a massive brain fart?"

I should have been either alarmed that she'd already listened to the message, or relieved that she'd guessed exactly why I'd left it. Maybe both. Instead, I felt angry. "Maybe I really had a serious problem with the way you were treating me and Miss Asahina."

She finally turned and looked at me. She didn't look bothered, though. "Usually you're not so stupid as to lose your temper with me. Much less threaten me. That's why I hung up on you. I wanted to give you time to cool down."

"Liar. You were afraid to have a real talk with me about it."

"Afraid? Of _you_?" She snorted. "Anyway, I forgive you this time, but try not to let it happen again."

So much for that "partners vow" making any difference in Haruhi's real world attitude. "Only if you apologize to Miss Asahina."

"For what? She's the one who disobeyed her brigade chief's orders."

"That doesn't excuse what you did to her."

"I don't need an excuse! I'm the leader of the SOS Brigade, so I decide the punishments!"

This was heading in exactly the wrong direction, I realized. "Look, I don't want to argue with you. I just -"

"Then stop telling me what to do." She looked out the window again. "Idiot."

I grit my teeth as I turned around towards the front of the classroom. To think, she'd been afraid that I was _bored_ of her. _How could anyone get bored of someone so infuriating? For all we've gone through, she's still as stupidly blind, condescending, and heartless as the day I met her. I don't care what Koizumi says._

* * *

At lunchtime I decided to forego my usual chat with Taniguchi and Kunikada and seek out Miss Asahina. Though it was my fondest desire to spend more time with her, there were always two big obstacles: the awkwardness of wandering among the upperclassmen, and her own resistance to us cavorting together without the permission of "Miss Suzumiya". On this particular day, though, I was willing to force my way through those two obstacles, since Miss Asahina's well-being was threatened. For her sake, I could brave any threat.

So I wandered down to the lovely time traveler's classroom and slipped inside. I spotted her seated with her lunch and surrounded by her coterie of friends, also second years. None of them matched Miss Asahina for beauty, but I'd be lying if I said all of them completely paled before her. Ordinarily I'd balk at looking so embarrassingly presumptuous as to approach a whole group of attractive upperclassmen, but this couldn't wait until classes were over.

Ignoring the girls' giggling at me, I stepped forward and said, "Miss Asahina, could I speak to you for a minute?"

She nodded. "S-sure." The giggling increased. Miss Asahina turned to her friends. "Um, could you excuse us just a minute?"

They cleared off as requested, but as they did so Tsuruya paused to shoot me a wink that I didn't like at all.

I sat down opposite Miss Asahina. "Having friends kind of puts a bright side to coming back to the real world, doesn't it?"

"Mmm-hmm." She smiled gently at me.

No delaying the inevitable, I supposed. "...But, I'm afraid I haven't been able to convince Haruhi she was wrong to attack you Monday."

"You mean yesterday?"

"...Yeah, yesterday."

"I see. You didn't fight with her, did you?"

"Oh." I'd forgotten about my promise to Miss Asahina not to fight with Haruhi. "Yeah, I guess we did fight a little..."

Miss Asahina's forehead hit her desk.

"Hey, it's not that bad." I started to move my hand to lay it reassuringly on her shoulder, but then I remembered everyone in the class was watching us. "She must have got most of her bad mood worked out in that pocket realm. She's basically back to normal. It's just, I couldn't honestly tell you it's safe for you to come to the meeting today."

She lifted her head. "No, we'd both better go. I know we said yesterday that I would skip it, but after everything that happened in that world, I think she needs us now. Even if she doesn't know it."

"Are you sure you're up for that?"

She nodded.

"All right." I let out a sigh. "I just wish I could get her to apologize for once. She was talking about wanting to change just a few days ago, but it looks like she'll never change when it comes to that."

Miss Asahina looked like she wished she had some response to that, but in the end she just nodded sadly. She was so compassionate, yet so helpless. And I wished, not for the first time, that the shadow of Haruhi Suzumiya didn't stand between us.

* * *

I had cleanup duty that day, so I told Haruhi I would be late to the meeting.

"I'll stay with you and help," she volunteered. "The SOS Brigade doesn't have any important business today, anyway."

By this time I had finally learned to expect Haruhi's "help" to involve nothing more than her hovering over me and kibitzing. But I doubted she would take "no thanks" for an answer, and this would ensure that she wasn't harassing Miss Asahina in my absence.

The rest of the class cleared off to their various clubs and homes, leaving the two of us alone. As I got the broom and undertook the tedious task of sweeping, Haruhi leaned back against the wall. "Hey, Kyon... I can tell you anything, right?"

"I don't see why not." I had practically zero interest in conversation with Haruhi at the moment. My attention was focused on the dry bits of brown that dotted the floor.

"Here goes, then. See, I didn't tell you the whole story about the curry bread I gave you yesterday. I started making it just as practice, but as I was making the curry, I thought... Listen, you'd better not make fun of me for this!"

_Better not make fun? The curry bread? All prefaced with "I can tell you anything"? Oh no._ "Wait a second, I changed my mind. I don't think I want to hear this."

But Haruhi was past listening. "I thought, maybe if I make the curry bread just right, if I put all my heart and skill into it, and give it to Kyon, he'll be interested in me again. And it will show him that I'm making little changes in myself, like he said I should."

_T__h__is is just painful. __S__he's not doing it in a__n undignified__ voice, but still._ I tried busying myself with the sweeping.

"So I made the best curry bread I could, and brought it to school." She sniffed disdainfully at herself. "You know how sometimes you get an idea, and it seems so awesome, so brilliant, and you make all these plans around it, and then, just as you're about to do it, you realize that the idea is completely stupid? You suddenly see all these huge, obvious problems with it that you overlooked before because you let yourself get too excited. That's what happened. I got the curry bread out, and as soon as I laid eyes on you, I realized what would happen if I gave it to you. It would be incredibly embarrassing for both of us, and no matter how good the curry bread was, you wouldn't like it because I was the one who made it."

"That's not true. I'd have been embarrassed, yeah, but I would still have enjoyed it."

"Oh, really? So it didn't suddenly taste a lot worse the moment that Mikuru told you I made it?"

I couldn't form a reply. _Damn mind reader._

"That's what I thought," she said smugly. "That's why I told Mikuru not to tell you. She ruined it for you. By the way, how was your lunch with her?"

_Damn. Of course that would get back to Haruhi __somehow__._ "Why do you have such a problem with me spending any time with Miss Asahina lately?"

"No problem. Just an observation."

"We're both still worried about you attacking her over a piece of curry bread."

"Tell me something," she said, completely ignoring what I'd just said. "When we were in that mansion where all the weird stuff happened, who was it who came to your room? Of the five of us, you're the only who weaseled his way out of telling that."

_Oh, great. Now she's bringing that up. Even if there were ever a good time to reveal that a fake Asahina came to my bedroom and started undressing, this would most definitely not be it._ "What does that matter? Like Koizumi said, that whole thing was just an illusion."

"Haven't you figured it out yet? Each of us was visited by an impostor pretending to be the one of us who is most important to them. Mikuru saw an impostor of me, because I'm her brigade chief, and I taught her about how to become a superstar idol. Plus, we're so close as friends, we're almost like sisters."

_Oh, is that why you tried to pull her hair out when she tried to help you?_

"Yuki got an impostor of you, because you're the one who always stands up for her, and pretty much the only person she talks to. Koizumi also got an impostor of you, which is pretty straightforward. You're the only guys in the group. Do you get it now?"

I bent down to sweep a pile into the dustpan. "Well, that theory breaks down when we get to you, since you were also visited by an impostor of me. What was he doing with you, anyway? You said I was acting out of character, but you didn't say how."

"Oh, no! I'm not giving you that information when you haven't even told me who was in your room! So spill it, already!"

I didn't know what to say. I could lie, but that would be demeaning. She'd probably see right through it, anyway. So for a minute there was only awkward silence.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," she huffed. "I spill my guts, and you won't tell me anything. That's the way it always goes. Well, no more. From now on, I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. I'll tell you what your impostor and I were doing just as soon as _you_ finally tell me whose impostor was in your room. I'm sick of you knowing everything about me while I don't know anything about you."

_Oh, that's rich._

"What did you say?!"

I paused in my sweeping and looked at her. It was so frustrating that beneath that pretty face, irresistible drive, and essential likableness was such an ugly human being. "The reason you don't know anything about me is because you've never bothered to learn. All these months you've sat behind me, when have you ever asked me anything? You even shut me up when I tried to tell you my birthday. You don't know anything about me because you've never been interested."

"Well, I'm interested _now_," she returned. "When is your birthday?"

I resumed sweeping. "You already missed it. Weeks ago."

"And you won't tell me who visited your room at the mansion either, huh?" She paused, as though she thought I might actually give her an answer. "Well, I'll bet I can narrow it down, anyway. It wasn't me, right?"

I didn't like the direction this was taking. "What does it matter? Even if it wasn't you, and even if you're right about it being the person in the SOS Brigade who's most important to me, what does it matter?"

She walked over to the window and looked out. "I was watching this old American TV show last night, about these two detectives..." _Do tell._ "I started thinking about how fun it would be to be the characters in the show. Do you ever do that?"

"Sometimes. Life is more exciting in stories."

"Right. We could solve all sorts of baffling cases, have crazy chases. This time, though, I was also thinking about how the characters talk to each other about their feelings. They could talk to each other about any subject at all. A lot of the time they'd argue about it, but they were always completely honest with each other."

_Great. Something we have in common with Hayes and Addison._

"It made me start to think... I want more out of our relationship."

"What's wrong with the way things are now?"

"We barely even have a relationship, that's what's wrong." She sounded annoyed now. "We only see each other during classes and SOS Brigade activities. Either way, there's a whole bunch of other people around, and we're busy with other things. How often do we actually have a meaningful conversation? Twice a month, maybe?"

"Even those TV characters you think so much of only get about 20 episodes a year," I retorted. "That's less than twice a month. They're made-up characters, and even they don't have meaningful conversations any more often than we do."

"What fictional characters do doesn't matter!" _Then why did you make us act like them for weeks?_ "Our relationship should be more than this. You and I can be bigger than that."

I swept up the last pile of dirt and dumped it. "Are you talking about romance? Because if you remember, it was _you_ who broke up with _me_."

"Of course I'm not talking about romance. We tried that, and it was boring."

"What kind of relationship are you talking about, then?"

"I don't know! There's no precedent for it. You and I should be more than any two people were in the history of mankind." She rested her jaw in her hand, still gazing out the window. "I don't know exactly what that is, but we should be more than classmates, more than friends, more than siblings, more than lovers. Just, more."

I didn't know what to say. It felt like any comment I made would just seem hopelessly petty by comparison.

She turned and shot me a withering glance. "But you obviously don't want that."

_Of course not. You need to stop treating your brigade members like crap when we don't do what you want, but apart from that, I've been pretty happy with how we get along. Why would you want to change that?_

"That's why it bothers me that you always choose to spend time with Mikuru instead of me. It should have been an impostor of me that came to your room that night."

_Hopefully that __impostor__ wouldn't have also started undressing. I don't know where you have moles or birthmarks, so I wouldn't have been able to tell she was a fake._

"I get it," she sighed. "You know so much about me that you're not interested in learning more. To you, I'm just a book sitting on the shelf that you've already read."

She walked away from the window, and it looked as though she was leaving. But at the classroom door she turned and looked back towards me. "But those days are over! There's a lot more you don't know about me than you think, and a lot of what you do know about me is going to change, and from now on I'm not telling you any of it for free. You'll be begging to know my secrets before I'm done." In a final gesture before leaving, she smirked and pointed her finger at me like a gun. "Consider yourself warned!"

Whatever. Any secrets Haruhi had were probably just variations on the same old thing. But there was no breaking her overconfidence in herself.

I was more concerned about this idea she had of making us something "more". Could she be talking about – partners? Was that part of why she'd chosen _Moonlighting_ as the foundation for her pocket realm? Deep down, was she dissatisfied with having me as nothing but her footstool? Could it be that Haruhi, for all her domineering and bossiness, at some level wanted to relate to me on equal terms?

Or was that just wishful thinking? She still wasn't even trying to treat me as an equal when it came to what she did to Miss Asahina. _"I don't need an excuse! I'm the leader of the SOS Brigade, so I decide the punishments!"_ That was it. No discussion.

I decided to do the blackboards next. As I reached for the eraser, though, another hand snatched it away.

"Ha!" Haruhi grinned at me while I just raised an eyebrow. "Surprise number one. I'm taking over the rest of the cleanup, so you can go straight to the meeting!"

"That's against the rules. I was assigned cleaning duty, so I have to do the cleaning."

"Pffff, you can't let rules hold you down. Besides, the SOS Brigade chief's authority overrides that of petty cleaning rules!"

_I'm one hundred percent sure that's not the case._

I reached for the other eraser, but she saw my move and nabbed it first. "Too slow! Now get to the meeting, or it's a penalty for you!"

Not much sense in fighting about it. With a sigh, I let her have her way, taking my bag and leaving the classroom. Was taking on what little cleanup was left supposed to be part of that change she was talking about? As a proof of magnanimity, it was laughably petty.

When I got to the clubroom, it was still only Nagato and Koizumi there. Koizumi had the chess board out and gave me an inviting look as I came in, but I ignored him and made my way to Nagato, who sat in her usual corner reading. I was relieved to see that her face lacked even the stubble that remained after her mustache was shaved off.

"So," I said to her. "You're back to being all female?"

She faintly shrugged her head forward in assent without taking her eyes off her book.

"So... Do you prefer being a man or a woman?"

She flipped a page of her book. "I will not say."

"Why not?"

"If I say a man, you will be displeased. If I say a woman, you will fear I am lying to please you."

I felt a lump in my throat. "...There are nice things about being a woman, you know."

"Oh?" Koizumi chimed in. "Are you saying you would prefer being female?"

"Shut up."

"You might have asked Miss Nagato about other things. How she intends to respond to Miss Suzumiya's judgment on her in the other world, for instance. Or perhaps how the original version of the Wylie episode turned out. Now that we've lived through the whole episode, spoilers are no longer an issue."

Something about the way he said that made me suspect he'd already asked her, but I was curious. "That's true. Nagato, what happened to your character in the original episode?"

"Apprehension by Addison and Hayes."

_...Okay, that answers almost nothing._ "And after that? Did he get sent to prison, or what?"

"The episode does not say."

"So, you getting hired by the SOS Detective Agency was entirely Haruhi's idea."

No reply.

"That means you can't say you're just here to observe Haruhi anymore. She's declared you one of us."

Still nothing.

"You know, before you got here, I asked her about the Everett episode," Koizumi said, smiling. "She told me about a scene with Hayes and Addison in the parking garage that you didn't mention to me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh?" His smile twinkled. "So you're telling me that... it didn't happen?"

_Is th__ere__ some in-joke that I haven't been let in on?_ "I'm serious. If there was a scene in a parking garage, Haruhi must have left it out. It's not like she has a photographic memory."

"Ah. That is possible. But I doubt she left out this particular scene because she forgot it." He turned towards Nagato. "Why don't you summarize the parking garage scene for him?"

Nagato spoke: "The morning after David Addison came to her house and informed her of Lawrence Everett's death, Madeline Hayes drove to work and parked her car in the parking garage. There David Addison accosted her and told her -"

Nagato continued her little recap, but I was no longer listening. My attention had been seized by the newest arrival to the meeting, who had slammed the door open and exclaimed, "Sorry I'm late! I was – Oh!" Miss Asahina sighed in relief. "Miss Suzumiya isn't here?"

"She usurped my cleaning duty," I explained with a smile. It was good to have the one club member who would never annoy me around.

"Good. Then I should have time to get myself changed."

Koizumi and I cleared out, and by the time Miss Asahina had changed into her maid outfit, the matter of the parking garage scene had been forgotten, which I suspected was for the best. I opted to take up Koizumi's earlier invitation to a game of chess. We had only just moved our pawns out when our brigade chief burst in.

"I'm heeeere!" As if we were supposed to get excited about this. In fact, Miss Asahina, who was busy making the tea, flinched at her arrival. "What's the matter, Mikuru? You look like you're expecting punishment. Did you do something bad?"

"N-n-n-n-no! I just..."

"Leave her alone," I cut in. "Can't you figure out she's terrified because of what you did to her yesterday? How can you treat people like that and expect them to still feel comfortable around you, like nothing happened?"

Haruhi glared at me. "What do you know? You have less sensitivity than an eel! So don't go pretending you suddenly understand how girls feel."

I was about to deliver a retort, when I realized something. It wasn't just my spending more time with Miss Asahina that bothered Haruhi. She had that same frustrated look on her face when I stepped in to help Miss Asahina on Monday. And she had that same frustrated look on her face now.

She wanted to be more important to me than Miss Asahina.

Strange as it was, I felt a little sorry for her. Maybe because I'd felt the same thing myself, when Nagato told me she hadn't rebuilt the world to bring me and her together. That same selfish desire to be the center of someone's world, even when they're not the center of yours.

So I said, "I do understand how you feel. I'm not saying any of this to hurt you. But you have to give some consideration to how Miss Asahina feels, too. She's important to you, isn't she? Don't you want to keep her happy?"

"Of course I want to keep her happy," she snapped. "That's obvious. It's even part of my job as brigade chief! You just don't understand how I do things." She strode over to Miss Asahina, who quivered. She looked like she was fighting the urge to make a run for it. "Listen, Mikuru. Are you really that upset about the punishment I gave you yesterday?"

"Um..." She looked down. "Well..."

"But you know I didn't really mean to hurt you, right?"

"I... guess..."

"And anyway, I promise not to do it ever again."

"You won't...?"

"Nope! I've decided that from now on, my punishments will fit the crime. So in this case, since you ruined my gift for Kyon, your punishment is that you have to make Kyon curry bread yourself."

"B-but I'm no good at -"

"I said it's a punishment, didn't I?" She patted Miss Asahina's head. "Next time, listen to my orders, okay?" She went to her desk and busied herself with drawing something in a notebook.

Well, it wasn't an apology, but you couldn't expect one from Haruhi. And it had healed the wound, judging by how Miss Asahina hadn't flinched when she patted her head. Overall, I'd count this as a victory.

I moved out one of my bishops.

"Your power over Miss Suzumiya is something to see," Koizumi remarked as he brought out a knight. "To treat Miss Asahina with such gentleness is something I never thought I'd see her do."

"It's a baby step," I muttered. "Meanwhile, she took a giant leap backwards when she used her power the way she did last night. I still don't know why she chose the fictional world she did."

"I'd venture to say there were several reasons. It was a suitable way of teaching Miss Nagato a lesson, it was fun and exciting, and it allowed her to try something new in her relationship with you."

"Right... being partners."

"Actually, I was referring to the flirting and joking. I don't believe the two of you being partners is really anything new." He moved his knight to threaten my bishop. "I don't think you believe it, either." How I wished he hadn't eavesdropped on that last thing I'd said to Haruhi in the other world. "Speaking of which, Miss Nagato told me that the argument you two had over wearing the mask and veil is in the original episode. So perhaps that is another reason why she chose _Moonlighting_. In the episode, Madeline Hayes said she would rather not have had David Addison for a partner, and came to realize she didn't mean it. Perhaps Miss Suzumiya sensed you were yearning to say the same thing, and hoped that you too would realize you didn't mean it."

"Well, she was wrong. I did mean it."

He chuckled. "I only said what she hoped. I don't think she was certain of how you feel about being her partner, especially not after what happened yesterday. She was determined to know, one way or another, whether or not you are happy being with her. Now she feels satisfied that you are. You say she is wrong." He inclined his head in her direction. "She's right over there if you wish to correct her."

"And cause her to try to destroy the world again? No, thanks."

"Yes, you always have that excuse."

It was time to change the subject. "The biggest problem is, our being back in the real world doesn't mean Haruhi's powers have stabilized. If..."

I trailed off, because a rare sight was taking place in my peripheral vision: Nagato getting up from her chair of her own accord. Still holding her book, she walked over to Haruhi, who looked up.

"I apologize," Nagato said.

"Huh?" Haruhi said. "For what?"

Panic hit me. Was Nagato finally going to tell Haruhi everything? She couldn't really apologize without explaining that she was apologizing for playing editor with the universe and leaving me in a coma, and she couldn't explain that without explaining where she got the power to do that from...

But she just stood there, and blinked.

I guess she just felt she had to apologize, even if she couldn't explain why.

Haruhi stared back at her a moment, then said, "Well, you're forgiven, I guess. I'm not sure what you're apologizing for, but all the same, I appreciate it."

Nagato went back to her seat without another word.

"Hey, Kyon!" Haruhi waved the notebook she'd been drawing in. "Stop your eavesdropping and tell me what you think of this!"

I sighed and got up from my chair, bracing myself for a look at whatever mad scheme she had hatched now. What did she need my opinion for, anyway?

END


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